Comedian Conan O’Brien’s recent Harvard commencement address was among the most insightful and moving (certainly the funniest) of the 2026 graduation speeches. His message: Don’t contribute to the narcissism epidemic.

O’Brien, in his inimitable mix of gentle ribbing of others (chiding students for complaining about imperfections in their luxurious surroundings) and rueful self-evaluation (“I am aware that I am telling you to transcend your glories as I stand on this stage accepting a doctorate I didn’t really earn, well-dressed, like a 12^th-century pope”), ran a master class in remediating an outbreak of pathological narcissism. He told the crowd not to fall for the temptation of self-glorification:

I endeavor to always remind myself that I have done absolutely nothing alone. Walt Whitman wrote, “I contain multitudes.” Well, I contain a breakfast sandwich and an iced coffee from Tatte, but whatever I have achieved has been with the help of an infinitely packed clown car of multitudes.... Recognizing that my accomplishments are not just my own has given me much-needed balance throughout my life, and it really helps to spread the blame around when things go south.

He warned that social media algorithms aggravate one’s tendency to indulge in self-congratulation. After all, they are designed “to celebrate you and you alone by making you the protein-maxing hero of your own special journey.”

On a national level, unbounded arrogance fuels isolationism and contempt for the rest of the world. O’Brien wisecracked:

As you are aware, the current administration feels Harvard admits too many foreign students.… After all, what has any foreigner ever added to our American culture? With the possible exception of music, literature, art, cuisine, fashion, architecture, dance, scientific breakthroughs, and the core of our moral codes and ethical beliefs.

This is more than just a regrettable sociological phenomenon. That culture of self-absorbed malignant narcissism now envelopes our politics. Donald Trump’s entire second term is an exercise in translating his pathological narcissism into government policies (many blocked; all counterproductive). Virtually every decision and action is guided by insatiable hunger for self-enrichment, aimed at eliminating dissent and designed to fan internal division (pitting Americans against an unending list of made-up domestic enemies from Somalia migrants to antifa). It’s no secret that the White House is fostering the sort of environment fertile for the regime’s fascist agenda.

We wind up with government of, by, and for the paranoid and self-centered. “Our current leadership in Washington believes that empathy is a weakness and that our nation stands supreme and alone,” O’Brien noted. (Certainly “alone”; “supreme” in nothing but lost political support.)

O’Brien zeroed in on this horde of undeserving little men (mostly all are men) who insist their accomplishments are unmatched and that luck — whether in parentage, health, or other random factor — has nothing to do with their success. O’Brien calls the assumption “ignorant,” although malignantly narcissistic might be more accurate.

Attributing all success and worthy ideas to themselves while casting all dissent as traitorous is not a formula for effective governance, to put it mildly. A ruling class that is entirely convinced of its own flawlessness, that tends to blithely ignore evidence and that refuses to admit error and course correct, the Trump regime cuts itself off from expertise that might actually improve its performance.

If there is a silver lining, it is that the “only we know best” Trump regime inevitably commits humiliating self-owns on virtually all policy fronts — from a disastrous war and even more disastrous ceasefire deal to failed revenge prosecutions to inflation. (They may be trivial in comparison, but the draped sheet over the portion of the Kennedy Center building where his name once appeared and the scramble to dump bleach into in the reflecting pool to treat its algae outbreak seem to perfectly encapsulate the sort of bumbling we have come to expect.)

As MAGA elites fester in recrimination and turn on each other, they give time for democracy forces to peel off Republican voters, bulk up their effective organizing machine, build resiliency and enthusiasm in volunteer groups, and raise sufficient money to fund the fight to retain democratic and humane values. If Democrats prevail in November, thanks in part the incompetent narcissists’ self-inflicted political injuries, they can turn to planning sweeping democratic reform and repairing broken institutions.

But will that political response be enough to redirect America away from the dark MAGA era? That brings us back to O’Brien. His message boils down to a powerful argument that politics alone won’t cut it. Institutions need fixing, but institutions are just collections of people. We desperately need to focus on the narcissism outbreak and elevating virtuous, kind, caring, and modest people who can be stewards of self-government. Instead of government of, by, and for the self-centered, we need one that is of, by, and for the better angels of our nature.

For now, give credit to Conan O’Brien and other good-humored, undaunted, and unabashed defenders of kindness, learning, decency, social solidarity, and empathy. They remind us that if we increase the quotient of decent and empathetic people engaged in politics, we can increase the chances of preserving our pluralistic democracy.

Trump promised at the start of his illegal war to extract an unconditional surrender. Certainly, the document does read like a near total capitulation — but not by the Iranian regime. Iran’s accomplishments are impressive. It remains in control with a grip on the Strait of Hormuz, keeps a robust missile program, and has no reason to abandon its proxy terror network.

Trump went so far as to bless Iran’s retention of a missile program (the same that killed Americans, struck our Gulf allies, and did immense damage to the region’s oil production). The Times of Israel reports:

“If other countries have them, it’s a little bit unfair for them not to have some,” Trump said in France, where he held a press conference on the sidelines of a G7 summit. “If Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and they all have some, I would say that in relative proportion, I think it’s okay” for Iran to have ballistic missiles as well.

“Missiles aren’t the problem…. They hurt a little location, but they don’t blow up the planet (like nuclear weapons do),” Trump said.

Thunk. The Iranians certainly never expected to have an American president running PR for them.

But that is not the most inexcusable element of this diplomatic disaster: In return for nothing more than a ceasefire already in place (without consequences if it comes and goes) and Iran’s trite recitation that it won’t seek a nuclear weapon, Trump agreed to the immediate lifting of sanctions.

The Wall Street Journal flatly concedes the deal includes “a huge boost to Tehran’s oil industry, potentially restoring … more than $60 billion a year of revenue.” (Who needs pallets of cash when you have turned the gas spigot back on?)

As part of the deal, the U.S. will lift its blockade and Iran will reopen the strait, but Iran did not give up the right to impose “fees” on carriers. Imposing fees and the threat of another closure of the strait effectively jettison the fundamental principle of navigation of the seas. (Any Democratic president would be run out of town for committing such a blunder.)

Veteran Middle East negotiator and author Aaron David Miller told me, “A flawed MOU follows a flawed war.” How bad is the deal? Iran gets much of what it wants while U.S. must wait for “concessions on the main event — nuclear,” Miller observed. “Everything else depends on negotiations.”

J Street’s Ilan Goldenberg also thinks the deal is a bust, one that is “much weaker than President Obama’s nuclear agreement that Trump walked away from 8 years ago.” Goldenberg reiterates that the deal “puts us worse off from where we started. The reality is that the likelihood of a follow-on deal on nuclear issues over the next 60 days or ever is extraordinarily low. Trump is not getting Iran’s enriched uranium.”

Outrage over the deal is building on Capitol Hill, from Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) to Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE). Coons, among the most respected Democrats on foreign policy, told me via email, “The more we learn about this deal, the worse it appears.” Although Trump’s goals during the war shifted daily, “judging by the text of the MOU, it doesn’t seem like he achieved a single one of them,” Coons said.

Coons listed the missteps: “It abandons our allies, weakens our security posture, lifts sanctions and hands over billions to a hardline Iranian regime, all just to return to where we were three months ago with Iran ruled by a hardline, repressive regime, with drones, missiles, proxies, and an underground nuclear program.” Coons reminded me that “the costs of this war for our country have been enormous, including more than a dozen dead Americans, hundreds of millions in damages to equipment and weaponry, and domestic prices skyrocketing for gas and groceries.”

And finally, as Coons put it, “The easiest way to tell that even the White House knows this deal is a disaster? Instead of trumpeting it as his own deal, Trump is putting the eventual blame on JD Vance.” If he does, Vance may regret giving up the Ohio Senate seat to play second fiddle to our modern-day Nero.

No Democrat should be “welcoming” the deal to “end the war” as many ill-informed lawmakers’ rote written statements said. (Fortunately, none used the phrase “peace in our time.”) This is an unmitigated disaster entirely of Trump’s making. Lifting sanctions in return for no concrete concessions signals Iran, not Trump, is in the drivers’ seat.

And if you had any doubts about just how bad the deal is, take a look at the Israelis’ meltdown over its terms. (The Associated Press reported: “Israelis from across the political spectrum reacted angrily … calling it a disaster for Israel and directing their fury at one man: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”) It may well be that a more extreme, emboldened Iranian regime well outlasts the tenure of the right-wing Israeli government, the MAGA congressional majorities, and the careers of Trump apologists who delivered the worst strategic blunder in U.S. history.

Aside from the narcissist in chief, no one will be shocked if Republicans get clobbered in November — certainly not after they passed the big, ugly bill (slashing healthcare and SNAP benefits to give billionaires more tax cuts); refused to compel complete disclosure of the Epstein pedophile files, or exercise a modicum of oversight of the most corrupt administration in history; sided with Trump’s ICE shock troops; and enabled the illegal, disastrous war in Iran. But wait: Republicans are still digging their political hole.

Now, Republicans are menacing Social Security. After their own policies worsened the Social Security funding crisis (more about that in a minute), House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) last week grabbed hold of the proverbial third rail in politics, delivering Democrats a soundbite perfect for any “throw grandma over the cliff” midterm ad.

In a radio interview, Johnson responded to a government report that the Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund will run dry by 2032:

The reason we’re in trouble is because over seventy-four percent of federal spending is on autopilot — mandatory spending, that is your entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and things like Social Security — they have to be adjusted and fixed. We have a plan to do that next year, and it’s critical, because we’re at $40 trillion-plus in debt. At some point, you get into a hole so deep you can’t climb out of it, so desperate times call for desperate measures.

(Considering the timing — right after Elon Musk attained trillionaire status and Trump got slammed for professing love for inflation and indifference to Americans’ financial pain — you almost wonder if Johnson is picking Democrats to win in the midterm prediction markets.)

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Reacting to Johnson’s blunder, even right-wing Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told The Bulwark that the speaker made Republicans sound like they want “all of their tax breaks and loopholes and carried interest deductions … [and want] working people who’ve paid into all of these programs to take less.” (Although Hawley says he really does not “like the sound” of cutting Social Security, he really did not like the sound last year of Trump’s proposal to slash Medicaid either — but then voted for it.)

Three senior House Democrats swiftly pounced, recounting Republicans’ long- standing animosity toward Social Security. DOGE stooges sabotaged Social Security customer service, mishandled private data, and got caught trying “to mark millions of living people as dead to force them out of the country.” Putting benefit cuts on the table (even with the midterm disaster looming) confirms Republicans have not given up their yearning “to destroy Social Security and Medicare,” House Democrats argued.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CN) on Monday followed up with a detailed letter. “Republicans have a history of attempting to increase the retirement age, privatize Social Security, or otherwise cut Social Security benefits, and some Congressional Republicans have called to raise the retirement age or means-test benefits as the ‘solution’ to this problem,” they wrote. Recently, both SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Mehmet Oz have raised these ideas “to pay for the federal deficit, which the [big, ugly bill] worsened,” the senators observed.

Republicans’ favored “solutions” to the Social Security solvency problem exemplify their Simon Legree approach to governance. As the Democratic senators explained, raising the retirement age by two years would reduce a median retiree’s benefits between 17 and 35 percent, thereby “cutting tens of millions of Americans’ Social Security benefits and disproportionately [harming] seniors at the lower end of the income distribution who rely on Social Security as one of their main sources of income.”

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The senators also demanded Trump answer pesky questions such as: Would you support removing the cap on income? Does the administration currently have a proposal to address the insolvency of the Social Security trust fund, and if so, does raising the retirement age factor into that proposal?

We anxiously await the answers — and for Democrats to raise the Social Security issue over and over again on the campaign trail and in every available oversight and budget hearing.

In addition to their generic vow to strengthen entitlements by “making the wealthy finally pay their fair share, so every American can retire with dignity,” Democrats could offer additional proposals to boost funding for Social Security, such as slapping a 100 percent tax on illegal presidential emoluments or prohibiting corporate tax deductions for donations to projects defacing federal property (e.g., the arch, the ballroom).

In this same vein, Democrats, who should restore Social Security reserves when they regain the majority, should highlight how two key Trump initiatives have undermined Social Security.

First, the big, ugly bill worsened the Social Security funding gap. By lowering tax rates and temporarily expanding seniors’ standard deductions, it reduced the number of people paying into the system and the total amount paid in. Applying the Hippocratic Oath — first do no harm — would mean at least repealing the big ugly bill that robbed Social Security of critical revenue. (Certainly, repeal would also improve the general revenue picture, restore Medicaid and SNAP benefits, and end the unparalleled funding bonanza for abusive ICE and Border Patrol operations.)

Second, Trump’s draconian deportation operations and the concurrent crackdown on legal immigration make the Social Security problem worse. “Immigrants—including undocumented immigrants—offset the demographic factors that are straining the Social Security Trust Fund, namely fewer young workers paying into the fund and many more older Americans drawing from it,” the American Immigration Council has explained.

Halting the morally disgusting and economically disastrous assault on migrants would bring a bevy of positive results, but perhaps none as critical as helping to put Social Security on sturdier financial footing. Trump and his fellow white supremacists won’t admit that their economically suicidal anti-immigrant agenda, among other things, shrinks the tax base, stifles access to the best and brightness minds who promote technological innovation, and increase housing and food costs. But facts are facts. The resulting decrease in the workforce and payroll tax receipts has only aggravated the Social Security funding shortfall.

In sum, it took a decade, but Trump bootlicker extraordinaire Sen. Lindsey Graham’s infamous 2016 prophesy (“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed ... and we will deserve it”) certainly proved accurate. Republicans’ midterm blunders, specifically their latest assault on Social Security, perfectly illustrate that their Faustian bargain with Trump drained them of whatever political survival skills they still had. A crushing defeat in November would be precisely what they deserve.

“Deal”/“Agreement”

Ever since talks got under way to end the Iran war hostilities, Americans have gotten daily episodes of “Deal or No Deal.” Frustrated whenever he cannot get his way and frantic to juice the stock market and soften energy prices, Trump repeatedly has lied about the existence of a completed deal and what is in it.

Trump appears unable to differentiate between what he wants in the deal and what Iran has agreed to. The New York Times reported that in its interview with him Sunday night, “Trump seemed to be describing Iranian concessions that the country has not yet made, or that have been kicked to the follow-up negotiations.” (Shocking, I know.) The Times explained, “The memorandum of understanding, for example, only suspends tolls in the strait for 60 days, and then promises a regional dialogue about the future. Iran had never charged tolls before the war, so Mr. Trump is essentially celebrating a return to the prewar status quo.” Ouch.

Such flailing and lying comes with a significant downside. Trump’s premature, baseless announcements and misconceptions about what has been agreed to risk hardening Iranians’ impression that he is an easily manipulated buffoon from whom they can squeeze more concessions. (That takeaway seems entirely reasonable considering how little Trump achieved.) In short, be wary of deals that are not deals, and deal points that only Trump has embraced.

“No cash”

When confronted over the weekend with reports that at least $20 billion in Iranian assets would be unfrozen, Vice President JD Vance insisted Iran would not be getting any cash. You can understand Vance’s defensiveness given that no issue generated more Obama-bashing in the context of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) than the $1.7 billion so-called “pallets of cash” released on conclusion of the negotiation. Trump repeatedly lambasted Barack Obama for supposedly helping Iran rebuild its nuclear and missile programs and beef up support for terror proxies.

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Was Vance giving us the full story? Well, Israeli and other sources reported that Iran will get at least $20 billion via the United Arab Emirates, which the UAE publicly denied. (Did Vance mean to exclude U.S. but not UAE cash pallets?) Separately, Iran also claimed $12 billion will be released before negotiations even start. By Monday morning, Vance added a new element — $300 billion in “reconstruction funds.” On CBS’s morning show he said, “[T]hat’s the sort of thing they could have access to, funded by the Gulf coast coalition, so long as they honor their end of the obligation.” I’m not sure what that means, but worse I am quite certain Vance and Trump have no idea what that all entails. (For one thing, we don’t know what “the obligation” is.)

To put it mildly, this sure does not sound like everything is nailed down, yet strangely the terms of the deal remain under wraps.

In short, should Iran get anything close to these exorbitant sums before complying with all the terms of a final nuclear deal (and without guarantees the money won’t be spend for nefarious purposes), Republicans will be so disappointed. After all, some of them probably still take at face value whatever Trump and Vance say on any given day.

“Better than the JCPOA”?!

Trump has been fixated on getting a better result than the JCPOA he ripped up in 2018. However, we already know it is/will be worse just because of the cost obtaining it.

The price Trump (and in turn, all of us) paid for this pathetic resolution to America’s most disastrous war is breathtaking. Unlike Trump, Obama did not launch a unilateral, illegal war and blow $100 billion to get the JCPOA. On Obama’s watch, 13 Americans did not die in reckless, ill-prepared combat operations, nor did hundreds of our troops suffer serious injuries. Obama did not kill thousands of civilians throughout the region, repeatedly violate international law, send inflation soaring, burden Americans with crushing gas prices, reveal American isolation, or give China a leg up in international competition to obtain the JCPOA. Trump did all that and more.

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Trump depleted our munitions, which will take years and billions to restore. He shifted naval assets away from Asia, giving China a tactical and entirely free advantage while signaling to our allies in the region they may be expendable. And Trump’s meandering, incompetent management of the war convinced our Gulf allies we are hapless and unreliable.

If you are going to rack up those kind of costs, you better be getting something really significant from Iran, right? Alas ( pardon the expression), Trump seems like a cheap date. As the New York Times reported:

Mr. Trump repeatedly compared his new memorandum of understanding to the 2015 agreement reached between President Barack Obama and Iran’s leadership, arguing that his agreement will assure that Iran “cannot develop or purchase a nuclear weapon.” Iran agreed to that when it first ratified the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1970, and reaffirmed that agreement on the first page of the Obama-era accord.

Oops. Trump seems incapable of accepting that he did not get (and may never get) anything of real value from Iran.

If, by some chance, the deal goes beyond recycled pablum, Trump negotiators would face a heavy lift to match the terms negotiated alongside our allies in 2015 (e.g., precise caps on enrichment, an extensive inspection protocol lasting at least 15 years, sanctions snapback rules). For now, Americans are left to ask, “what this costly war without clearly articulated goals or legal basis actually achieved,” J Street Executive Director Jeremy Ben Ami told me. If Iran is going to “get billions in cash and sanctions relief, and the details of the agreement on nuclear fuel, limits on enrichment, and inspections still need to be worked out,” Ben Ami pointed out, “that’s precisely where we were before this pointless four-month war.”

Puffery gone wild

In sum, the Trump regime’s happy talk and empty platitudes about the Iran negotiations are worse than meaningless; they are a cynical effort to hide his responsibility for massive national humiliation. (Frightfully, they may signify Trump has no idea what is going on.)

Vance, who will be saddled with defending this dog’s breakfast of a deal if he runs for president, went so far as to declare the deal would “fundamentally transform the Middle East for the next 50 years.” (Only 50 years? What then?) His and Trump’s biggest problem in snowing their MAGA base may be Israel (which is already excoriating the deal) and MAGA anti-Iran hawks, who blew a gasket when details of the scheme emerged previously. What happens when they get sick of carrying Trump’s water and start blasting the deal along the same terms as Democrats?

In any event, the time has long passed to stop listening to Trump’s weasel words and phrases. Whenever you hear them, remember they likely amount to a confession of abject failure. If the deal were so great, believe me, we would know exactly what is in it.

CNN reported that last week 19 Epstein victims “responded to The New York Times’s reporting that Blanche and other senior officials participated in Situation Room meetings to discuss how to respond to growing pressure for more transparency as the issue became a public relations crisis for the administration.” The survivors’ statement read in part:

We are deeply disturbed to learn that so many senior members of the administration gathered in the Situation Room to discuss the release of the Epstein files as a reputational problem, rather than an opportunity to pursue investigative leads and try to figure out what actually happened.

The reporting, they said, only confirmed their “worst fears about the administration prioritizing political expediency over justice for survivors and truth for the American people.” And they blasted Blanche, who “has consistently minimized legitimate concerns about how the files have been handled, including problematic redactions and the exposure of survivors’ personal information.” They concluded that he “failed to deliver transparency, and he has gravely failed survivors.” (Their jab that promoting him to AG would “failing upward, plain and simple” aptly describes the Trump DEI program for elevating unqualified, ethically deficient white males to top posts.)

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Even before Blanche’s nomination, Republicans were under siege for their handling of the Epstein files. But Trump’s nomination of Blanche amounts to a gratuitous slam at Epstein victims, puts the issue back in the news, and forces Republicans (many past the primary season) to decide: Save their own careers or promote Blanche?

The perpetually concerned but never courageous Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) is infamous for Trump-friendly votes when it matters (e.g., acquitting Donald Trump in the first impeachment trial; confirming obvious opponents of Roe v. Wade for the Supreme Court; sending the big, ugly bill to the floor when she could have stopped it in its tracks). She has been at her most spineless in rubber-stamping unfit, unqualified, and morally decrepit Cabinet members such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services secretary, Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, and Pam Bondi for attorney general. Would Collins now double down and confirm yet another Trump stooge over the objections of Epstein survivors?

Surely, even she understands that a vote to confirm Epstein victims’ nemesis could be a career-ender. If “character” is what Republicans want to talk about in Maine, Democrats may be more than willing to engage. (Indeed, Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner wasted no time last week making an issue of Republicans’ support for the “Epstein class.”)

Collins’ biggest problem may be finding enough colleagues willing to take the heat for voting to confirm Blanche so she can duck (i.e. vote no without imperiling Blanche and incurring Trump’s and MAGA’s wrath). Consider Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio), the governor- appointed replacement for now-Vice President JD Vance. It would be wholly foolhardy for him to ignore the Epstein abuse victims’ pleas.

Former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) already has put out ads against Husted pointing to Husted’s receipt of six-figure donations from the infamous Ohio billionaire and Republican donor Les Wexner, who hired Epstein as a financial adviser and was named in an FBI email as “co-conspirator” in Epstein’s sex trafficking crimes. (Husted has tried to muddy the waters by fishing around for names in the files who wound up giving to Brown, but, as fact checkers have noted, “[n]one of the donors the Husted campaign identified has been charged with a crime related to Epstein, nor has any been identified as a co-conspirator.”)

Blanche puts Husted on the hot seat: Should he support the Epstein cover-up architect for attorney general when no reasonable voter would believe Blanche is anything but a Trump stooge willing to perpetuate the heinous coverup? Husted could well conclude a “yes” vote for Blanche would doom his already-shaky campaign.

Likewise in Alaska, Blanche’s confirmation fight could very well aggravate Republican Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan’s own problems with the Epstein cover-up. Sullivan last September joined other Republicans (including Husted and Collins) in blocking a vote (on defense authorization) aimed at forcing release of the files.

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As a local Alaska journalist at the time noted, Sullivan blithely declared in a constituent letter, “I trust [!?!] the Department of Justice to carefully consider the release of relevant materials, while simultaneously ensuring that Epstein’s victims remain protected and that legal protocols are upheld.” As absurd as his faith in the Department of Justice was back then, a vote now for the man who thwarted the law and obstructed the release of the files would cement Sullivan’s image that he is Trump rubber stamp who would throw victims under the bus to keep his job.

Finally, even though Texas Sen. John Cornyn will not be on the ballot, Blanche’s confirmation fight is already roiling the race of the man who defeated him, MAGA extremist and scandal-plagued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. (Cornyn should consider if he wants one of his last important votes in the Senate to be a tip of the hat to Blanche and a kick in the teeth of Epstein’s victims.)

Houston’s Chron. reported on the ongoing fallout from Paxton’s sweetheart plea deal with Adam Hoffman, who was tried for first-degree sexual abuse of a child. (Seriously, what is it with Republicans cutting deals with accused pedophiles?) Democratic nominee James Talarico emailed the paper: “Adam Hoffman—an admitted child molester—just became a registered sex offender in Nebraska but still doesn’t have to register in Texas because Ken Paxton gave him an Epstein-style sweetheart deal.” Talarico continued: “Hoffmann was supposed to serve 25 years to life, but today he walks free after the most corrupt politician in America put the well-being of pedophiles over the safety of Texas children.”

Yikes. Talarico’s argument (“Does America really need someone who authored his own ‘Epstein-style sweetheart deals‘ roaming the halls of Congress”) may hit home even in deep-red Texas. No wonder Republicans would rather talk about veganism and transgender kids; perhaps supporting pedophiles’ victims is a better way to measure masculine virtue.

In short, by insisting on nominating Blanche — already under fire for masterminding the coverup, botching the files’ redaction, and conducting a nefarious interview with Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell — Trump has again handed Democrats a club to pommel Republicans who cannot resist Trump’s outrageous demands.

If cowardly Senate Republicans vote to install Blanche to run DOJ, many voters may well conclude it is time to throw Republican senators out en masse. At some point, all Americans must decide whether to stand with the Epstein and his enablers or with his victims.

Council on Foreign Relations Middle East expert Steven Cook told me that his initial impression of the announcement “is that there is nothing in the agreement on which President Trump can actually claim ‘victory.’” He noted, “Even if there is a return to freedom of navigation in the strait, it is merely a return to the Feb. 27 status quo.” Though we are supposedly going to sit down to talk about the Iranian nuclear program, Cook pointed out, “that is what we were doing before he launched the war.” He asked, “Why did he fight this war? Strategically, the president achieved nothing.”

Several aspects of the “deal” already raise troubling issues.

First, Trump and his bumbling negotiators did not force Iran to end its nuclear program or turn over enriched materials. At most, it appears Trump got an agreement to talk about negotiating limits on Iran’s nuclear program (a concept of a plan, if you will). Trump officials say the memorandum will “lead to” or be “direct line to” the results they promised because they have not actually attained their objectives.

Trump launched a war to topple Iran’s regime, eliminate its missile program and navy, end its support for terror proxies, and, most important, obliterate (really this time) its nuclear weapons program. He achieved none of those. (Andrew Miller pointed out that Iran still has nearly 1,000 pounds of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity, just shy of weapons grade, and we see no evidence that newer nuclear sites not hit in 2025 were damaged.)

Any initial agreement merely would kick off a 60-day period for Iran to open the strait and the United States to wind down its blockade. However, because Trump has retreated many times after threatening renewed military action, virtually no one — certainly not Iran — thinks Iran would be under a credible threat to complete negotiations within that timeframe. Like his never-delivered healthcare plan, an Iran final deal very likely will perpetually be two weeks away.

After the 60 days expires? The New York Times suggested it is “unclear” what happens then. But there is no mystery. Talks could continue — or not. In either case, Trump almost certainly won’t be any closer to a better version of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

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Second, be wary of empty catchphrases. Each side has recited its respective catchphrase for decades. U.S. officials’ insistence Iran will “never procure or develop nuclear weapons” offers us nothing new. (When even a CBS interviewer can flummox Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth by pointing out that Iran made the same pledge in the JCPOA, you know how weak that talking point is.) The only difference is a U.S. president desperate enough to take Iran’s empty words at face value. We did not need to fight a war, spend billions, lose 13 Americans, kill thousands of civilians, spike gas prices, and give the Iranian regime a new lease on life to get stale platitudes.

Third, the Strait of Hormuz might open — at some point. Or not. The Hormuz Strait is “OPEN TO ALL,” Trump insisted on Saturday … or maybe it has been open all along. (“We have controlled the straits this entire time!” Hegseth lied). Maybe it will be open. Then again, maybe it does not matter. Trump’s “announcing” Sunday evening that the Strait was open turned out to be another meaningless pronouncement. Comically, just minutes later he declared it would not open until Friday. (He can announce whatever he pleases of course; whether Iran is compelled to agree is another matter.)

More than 100 days after the war began, we still do not know if or how Trump will be able to reverse his jaw-dropping strategic blunder. Whatever benefits Iran reaps (e.g., tolls, blackmailing the world with the threat of future oil shocks) from shutting down transit will be entirely attributable to an ill-conceived war only Trump was dumb enough to start.

Finally, this is not anything resembling an “unconditional surrender.” Trump swore Iran would unconditionally surrender, but unconditional surrenders do not take weeks to negotiate. (By definition, deal points are conditions on ending a war.) Whatever we get won’t bear any remote semblance to an unconditional surrenders (e.g., all substantive wins for the victor, requirement for the vanquished loser to give up ample munitions or pay tribute). This seems closer to a Vietnam War-style negotiated retreat.

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Aside from Iran, we should acknowledge unconditional surrenders may be anachronistic. Council on Foreign Relations President Michael Froman explained,“The United States prosecuted a massive strike campaign against Iran, resulting in significant damage to its naval, missile, drone, and air defense capabilities — not to mention the deaths of regime leaders, including top military brass.” However, tactical triumph did not compel capitulation because Iran’s “deployment of relatively inexpensive drones, mines, and missiles has managed to wreak havoc on one of the world’s most critical waterways, countries throughout the Gulf, and select U.S. military assets.”

In other words, Iran’s anything-but-unconditional surrender underlines the flawed premise of Trump’s delusional foreign policy, namely certitude that major powers can annihilate lesser powers at will. However, when asymmetric warfare enables the latter to avoid defeat (let alone “unconditional surrender”), bullies’ fantasy of military dominance collapses. Instead, dimwitted aggressors who mistakenly think 20^th-century military assets like battleships and air power give them unchallenged supremacy wind up stuck in foreign quagmires (whether Iran or Ukraine) and besieged at home.

No one should miss the magnitude of America’s tragedy. Fixated on an unworkable foreign policy rooted in colonialism and spheres of power, Trump discarded the only viable means by which the U.S. could maintain unparalleled superpower dominance and prosperity — a rules-based international order under the auspices of the U.S. and its democratic allies. He traded that in for nonstop chaos and national decline.

The bottom line: Fighting ends for now with Iran’s regime in place, its nuclear materials beyond our reach, and issues like its ballistic missile program and support for proxy groups nowhere in the discussion. Worse, Iran comes away with an ace up its sleeve: its proven prowess in halting freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, which it may use to extract fees/tolls or threaten future closure. One big clue as to the magnitude of Trump’s blunder: His junior partner Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israel officials are very displeased.

We will have ongoing coverage as the deal points emerge.

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As only an obstreperous, diverse, nervy, and progressive city with heart can pull off, New York this week repeatedly showed Americans how to stand up to bullies and corruption, stand by vulnerable Americans, and withstand efforts to rob us of communal joy.

The sight of New Yorkers lining the streets and packed together in Madison Square Garden, unified in booing Donald Trump, who insisted on disrupting a city-wide celebration of the Knicks, warmed our hearts at The Contrarian. We captured some of the feel-good scenes in a short video:

New Yorkers are well practiced in the art of snubbing an unwanted intruder at an iconic city sports extravaganza. In what now looks like a test run, the U.S. Tennis Open crowd last year lobbed robust boos at Trump his home borough of Queens.

Trump’s security that disrupted fan attendance and the official watch party only intensified New Yorkers’ longstanding loathing of him. The Athletic reported:

The first sitting U.S. president to attend a finals game, Trump, 79, of New York, was booed louder than the San Antonio Spurs. He was shown long enough for the fans lustily booing him to see him smirk.…

The massive amount of extra security needed for a president to sit indoors with 20,000 hoops fans became an inconvenience for the city and a defining storyline going into the game — with extraordinarily long lines to get in, the no-bag policy and canceled watch parties outside of the Garden.

New Yorkers refused to let Trump ruin their fun. They launched spontaneous watch parties throughout the city. In addition, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on Monday via social media: “The @nyknicks are home and our city is ready to show out. We’re hosting a free watch party for 5,000 New Yorkers tonight in Bryant Park.” Some 7,000 fans showed up (with a few incidents of unfortunate, but minor, violence).

Beyond the NBA, Mamdani continued his campaign to fight sports ticket gouging, part of his battle for an affordable city and in vivid contrast to Trump’s tough-luck-to-working-stiffs reaction to exorbitant MSG ticket prices.

Well before attention shifted to the Knicks, Mamdani began to focus last year on FIFA, widely reviled as among the greediest and most corrupt sports organizations (among stiff competition!).

In that spirit, Mamdani unveiled a deal exclusively for New Yorkers to buy 1,000 World Cup tickets at $50 each (1/100^th the cost of many tickets), which even included a free bus ride to MetLife stadium in New Jersey. To underscore his affordability message, Mamdani staged his kickoff announcement “in Little Senegal, surrounded by Harlem residents, African community leaders and elected officials wearing jerseys representing tournament nations with deep roots in New York City,” his press release stated. Mamdani said: “A World Cup is coming to our backyard, and we want to ensure working-class New Yorkers have the opportunity to be part of it.” He touted his successful sit-down with the Host Committee to ensure that “this tournament belongs to the people who make this city what it is.”

Mamdani later shared his excitement with New Yorkers by releasing video clips of calls with ticket-lottery winners. Democrats should follow Mamdani’s example of skillfully displaying generosity to the 8.5 million neighbors whom he adores. Politicians need to remember that adept populist governance requires you sincerely like people, a foreign concept to Trump, who treats others as purely a means to his desired ends. (And, unlike Trump, Mamdani knows something about sports.)

New Yorkers outside of sports put their best foot forward in other venues, including Sunday night’s Tony Awards. The show was everything New York and Broadway aspire to be: irreverent, glitzy, creative, sophisticated, and fun. From Pink’s opening gala number to flag-waving fans joining in the tribute to Cats: The Jellicle Ball, the show producers expertly replicated the thrill of experiencing live theater. (“Sometimes, singing, dancing, a lot of jokes, and a happy ending is really all you need,” observed Schmigadoon! winning producer Lorne Michaels. Exclamation marks help also!)

New Yorkers and the Broadway community especially have well-deserved reputations for sentimentality. The Tony winners sent many in the live and home audiences digging for tissues.

Shoshana Bean gave a lovely tribute to single moms. (“This is for the mamas. This is for the single mamas,” she proclaimed. “This is for my single mama. You are the wild heroes.”)

Ali Louis Bourzgui’s ode to diversity expertly skewered selfish, hate-filled MAGA elites. “The billionaires will never find happiness from their money, the colonizers will never find fulfillment from the land, the lives they steal, the fascists will never find meaning from their conformity, not in this lifetime or eternity,” he said. “This is dedicated to the beautiful tapestry of immigrant families that make this country really special. May you one day not have to audition for the empathy that should be freely given by this country that benefits from your beauty.” Amen.

Playwright Bess Wohl’s win for “Liberation,” which also won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, may have been the high point. Her intimate, funny portrayal of a 1970’s Second Wave feminism consciousness-raising group (which included Wohl’s mother, a Ms. magazine writer) reminds us that grassroots movements permanently transform lives and whole societies — only to trigger vicious backlash.

No woman had won best play since Wendy Wasserstein’s award for The Heidi Chronicles in 1989. That draught for female playwrights suggests too many producers remain squeamish about backing plays by and about women — let alone ones that stir right-wing elites’ animosity toward women as full people.

However, Wohl chose celebration over recrimination. “Tonight I want to honor [Wasserstein]. I want to honor women everywhere who have the courage to use their voice,” she declared. “And to all the girls out there, may you speak your truth and may the world be wise enough to listen.”

Like her play, Wohl’s remarks extolled us to avoid despondency. Faced with an adjudicated sexual abuser in the Oval Office who routinely demeans women, MAGA justices’ relegation of pregnant women to second-class citizenship, and an explosion of misogyny in the Pentagon and throughout the executive branch — as well as in Congress, social media and private industry — Wohl inspires us to link arms, battle for equality and respect, and refuse to relinquish the moral high ground.

In sum, New York and its endearing mayor had a banner week (and they may still snag the 2026 NBA championship banner). They touted the lowest number of “murders, shooting incidents, and shooting victims in recorded history for the first five months of the year.” Socialist Mamdani has every reason to tell his free-market critics to chill. (“Robust aggregate wage growth, higher Wall Street bonuses along with capital gains realization, and recent economic and collections data contributed to the [city’s] improved outlook.”)

Just as important, New Yorkers modeled how to be undaunted in the face of bullies and greedy gazillionaires, unapologetic about celebrating creative excellence and humanistic values, unrestrained in their exercise of free speech, and unabashed in displaying civic pride. How can you not ❤️NY?

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We live in an era in which domestic politics and international events routinely plunge us into historically unprecedented circumstances. Although some humility should be in order before attempting to propound extravagantly definitive predictions, political operatives and pundits confidentially exude unwarranted certainty only to see reality confound their prognostications.

A year ago, not many foreign policy gurus would have predicted nonstop war would leave Iran, not Israel, on the rise in the Middle East; upend the U.S.-Israel relations; and severely undermine AIPAC’s political attack machine. (Likewise, not many foreign policy gurus doubted “the narrative put out by Russian propaganda, tacitly assuming that Ukraine, outmanned and outgunned, would eventually lose,” as Anne Applebaum recently observed.) These days, foreign policy prognostication is a fool’s errand.

Domestically, many horserace political reporters and angst-ridden Democrats have insisted Donald Trump’s nonstop onslaught of election denial conspiracies would imperil free and fair elections. That does not seem so certain now either.

Given how frequently results contradict Trump’s preferred storylines, we should pay far less attention to hysterical doom-mongering about his power to shape events.

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Iran/Israel

In launching last year’s 12-day bombardment of Iran to “obliterate” its nuclear weapons program, Israel’s right-wing government, bolstered by Trump’s war fervor, believed it found a path to rebound from its Oct. 7, 2023, national security debacle and worldwide condemnation of its conduct in Gaza. With scant evidence, too many observers accepted Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spin that they were in the driver’s seat and that intraparty fights over support for Israel would tear apart Democrats.

Now, the picture both internationally and domestically looks quite different. Israel faces condemnation across the U.S. political spectrum for dangling the prospect of Iranian regime change in front of Trump. The war has been a strategic failure for Israel and the U.S., endangering Netanyahu’s coalition government, turning American public opinion against Israel, and boosting advocates in Israel and the U.S. who want to curtail military aid to Israel. (AIPAC is in quite a pickle now that Netanyahu appears to favor curtailing U.S. military aid, the very position for which AIPAC vilified Democratic progressives.)

Matters got worse for the Trump-Netanyahu duo (and prognosticators certain of their triumph) when Iran bombed Israel, Netanyahu defied Trumps’ demand for restraint, and Netanyahu incurred Trump’s public tongue-lashing. Forced to halt his retaliation, Netanyahu was humiliated at home, which only affirmed his position as the snubbed junior partner in a disastrous war. (Now that Trump has retaliated for downing of a U.S. helicopter, Netanyahu looks all the more impotent.) Netanyahu’s rationale for retaining power — his supposed talent in manipulating the U.S. and garnering support for nonstop wars — is evaporating.

After that embarrassment, Netanyahu still faces, as Gideon Rachman explained, a “peace deal that Trump is working on seems likely to leave Iran in a stronger financial position — and still with a residual nuclear capability.” Netanyahu’s reliance on Trump and his preference for “an entirely military solution to Israel’s security problems — ignoring the political and diplomatic dimensions” render Israel more isolated and his coalition more precarious than ever.

Netanyahu’s arrogant insistence that Israel needed the support of only right-wing Republicans, permitting him to ignore bipartisan American opinion and legitimate concerns of American Jews, was a stupendous miscalculation. Instead of restoring his reputation, cementing an authoritarian alliance with the MAGA movement, and demonstrating the superiority of war over diplomacy, Netanyahu enters a treacherous election environment with Israel’s standing in the U.S. collapsing. Netanyahu apologists and observers who bought their spin certainly did not expect a seismic readjustment in U.S.-Israel policy, the hardening of Americans’ conviction that advocates of forever wars are dangerous, or a serious backlash against the Israel-right-or-wrong crowd. By contrast, Democrats who stuck with a morally and strategically defensible anti-war stance critical of Netanyahu have widespread public support.

Middle East developments remind us that extrapolating from unrelated events and assuming competency neither Trump nor Netanyahu possess lead to faulty conclusions. Remembering Trump’s uncanny preference for picking the wrong ally to pursue the wrong strategy — that is, betting against Trump’s utterly flawed foreign policy impulses — would lead to far more accurate results.

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Trump’s election denial/voting rigging may run out of steam

Inarguably, MAGA Supreme Court justices’ evisceration of voting rights and re-imposition of Jim Crow along with Trump’s phony election fraud claims have done real damage to pluralistic democracy. Certainly, Republicans’ re-redistricting gambit threatens to disenfranchise millions of voters, make elections less competitive, and increase ideological extremism. Still, Trump’s political collapse and the anti-MAGA political environment (getting worse by the day, thanks to Trump’s Iran war-driven 4.2 percent inflation , which he loves) strongly suggest that “the House map is not red enough to protect Republicans,” as Kyle Kondik of Sabato’s Crystal Ball confirmed. Bottom line: With Democrats are still favored “to flip the House in November,” panic over “stolen” or (even more hysterically) “cancelled” elections looks unwarranted.

Election law expert Rick Hasen recalled, “Trump has incessantly fueled beliefs on the right that voter fraud is prevalent in Democratic states, and in particular that California’s slow vote count shows that the system is ‘crooked.’” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson piled on when he told reporters California vote-rigging is “so diabolical and so far upstream it’s impossible to prove.” In declaring “everybody knows instinctively that something is wrong here,” however, Johnson gave away the game, Hasen dryly observed. (“Yes, the alleged voter fraud claimed by Trump and his allies is always the perfect crime: happening on a massive scale yet impossible to detect. It’s quite convenient to have a theory that is completely unfalsifiable.”)

With time, more voters, media outlets, public officials, and the courts have figured out that MAGA’s wild accusations are the fever dreams of losers desperate to excuse defeat. Trump’s early test runs (e.g., Fulton County, Georgia) of his election denialism risk inoculating the public against his specious claims. As Hasen noted, “[T]hanks to Trump himself, anyone paying any attention knows that California’s vote count is notoriously slow, that the ‘blue shift’ favoring Democrats routinely happens and that Trump has produced no evidence to support his claims.”

The legacy media now get it. “By baselessly framing [Los Angeles mayoral candidate Nithya] Raman’s rise as a Democratic scam, Mr. Trump extended his long-running project to erode public faith in elections — and gave an unusually clear preview of how he could greet any disappointing results for his party in November, when control of Congress is at stake,” the New York Times reported, emphasizing “how little of this has survived contact with reality.” Perhaps keeping Trump’s laughably ineffective antics under wraps would have been smarter.

Democracy activists should remain vigilant about efforts to invalidate elections based on a jerry-rigged, inaccurate national registration database. They should challenge executive decrees that may create havoc with mail-in balloting. But hysteria about a stolen election now appears unwarranted, especially if Democrats maximize voter engagement and turnout. (The bigger the margin, the harder it is to cheat.)

Widely publicizing Trump’s and Johnson’s confession that they have zero evidence of fraud may be the best way to boost the credibility of our elections, fend off Republican election antics, and quiet hysteria over a stolen election.

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We should not be surprised that Donald Trump is mentally and emotionally imploding under the cumulative effect of plunging poll numbers, his disastrous Iran war (which constantly humiliates him as both Iran and Israel repeatedly defy his desperate attempts to control them and his phony prognostications of progress in peace talks), and an increasingly irritable Senate Republican caucus.

Trump recently suffered from supporters’ unraveling and/or disaffection (e.g. Trump’s Paramount/CBS allies’ embarrassing implosion, the defection of white working-class and male voters, another insult to faith groups reminded of white Christian nationalists’ religious bigotry), repeated legal defeats, and multiple legislative losses unprecedented for a president with majorities in both houses (e.g. a House vote to fund Ukraine, passage of the War Powers Act resolution, opposition to Trump’s sleazy slush fund, collapse of FISA Section 702 reauthorization because of outrage over the appointment of Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence).

When you throw in the indignity of seeing his name physically scraped off the Kennedy Center building, the cancellation of musical has-beens from his cheesy, self-referential 250 Freedom bash, and the entirely expected torrent of boos from Knicks fans, you have the pathological narcissist’s worst nightmare: public humiliation. (Historian and fascism expert Ruth Ben Ghiat has explained that when their autocracies unravel, strongmen’s overwhelming fear of humiliation and loss of power compels them to lash out, grab more tightly to power, and make increasingly rash decisions in the vain hope of fending off decline.)

Certainly, Trump’s mental and physical disintegration has been on display for many years. However, it is easy to lose track of the velocity of Trump’s decompensation.

As a group of 36 mental health professionals recently explained in a stinging written statement, Trump’s outbursts are not “momentary lapses nor political theater”; they instead “reflect a rapidly worsening, reality-untethered, increasingly dangerous decline.” And this was before Trump’s explosion on Meet the Press, among the most cringeworthy presidential media appearances ever.

However, you do not have to be a medical professional to conclude Trump is getting much worse much more quickly. We should not avert our eyes from the indisputable evidence that Trump cannot cope with reality. When confronted with indisputable facts, he lashes out and retreats into denial. (As the New York Times reported, “President Trump, who campaigned on a central promise to keep the United States out of overseas wars, denied in an interview aired on Sunday that he’d ever made the pledge.”)

The “big blubbery baby man, enraged at his ebbing power” provided a disturbing image in his MTP interview, Democratic pollster and analyst Simon Rosenberg aptly noted, of an “an old, addled man clearly in profound decline.” His bloated, rage-filled, disheveled appearance and inability to engage rationally with anyone outside his cult tempt one to look away. Denial is natural when you fear nothing can be done to stave off an impending disaster.

But now is precisely the time to demand a robust debate in public, in Congress, and on the midterm campaign trail about the gravity of leaving a patently unfit, raving lunatic in the Oval Office. In light of the grave danger Trump poses, pro-democracy forces must educate the public, compel legacy media to cover his breakdown as vigorously and consistently as they did Joe Biden’s health after his 2024 debate, and pressure Republicans to remove or at least restrain him.

Democrats do not control Congress, although they do occasionally take charge of the House through discharge petitions. Nevertheless, they have successfully used so-called shadow hearings to expose urgent issues (e.g., ICE brutality). A serious, sober subcommittee (perhaps drawn from both the House Judiciary Committee and House Oversight Committee) with professional staff should conduct methodical public hearings and assemble a comprehensive report documenting Trump’s deterioration. In the laying out the circumstances and frequency of his mental/emotional breakdowns, the public should receive ample evidence that Trump’s increasingly severe meltdowns are not a function of simple aging or odd personality quirks (an absurd if not delusional interpretation of his conduct) but of dangerous mental and emotional dysfunction.

At the end of the process, Democrats (and any patriotic Republicans inclined to prevent grave harm to the country) should present a series of specific, feasible recommendations, including legislation to compel the release of all presidential medical records and to require independent medical evaluation of presidents and vice presidents. They should spell out rules to implement the 25^th Amendment. They also should make clear that once they have subpoena power after the midterms, they will supplement findings by calling witnesses to testify under oath as to his observable behavior. If Republicans defend his indefensible conduct and block common-sense measures, they will take on full responsibility for the wreckage that ensues from sheltering an unhinged, unwell president.

Next, Democrats must undertake a focused and robust push to present their findings to the press and the voters. If the president’s emotional and mental competency is not the most compelling issue of the moment, it is hard to imagine what would be. Republican House and Senate candidates need to be put on the spot in every public encounter: Do they think the president is of sound mind? What do they intend to do to, for example, protect nuclear codes? Why shouldn’t the public have full visibility into the health of a president whose conduct has been so obviously aberrant? Democrats should pound away at the issue in floor speeches, media spots, op-eds, and public forums.

If it were not obvious before, leaving Trump in power surrounded by spineless yes men unwilling to challenge him and a MAGA Congress that abets his increasingly erratic conduct and flights from reality is a recipe for disaster — and the most persuasive reason to elect substantial Democratic majorities in both houses. Nothing is more urgent to the survival of our democracy, national security, and collective well-being than to begin now to convince voters that stringent guardrails (if not, removal by 25^th Amendment or impeachment) are required to shield the United States from further harm.

Given the public’s rising disgust with Trump and his propensity to humiliate himself on a near daily basis, voters might well become convinced that extraordinary action is required to defuse the ticking time bomb in the White House.

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After nominations of thoroughly unqualified, incompetent, and ethically unfit characters such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one might have thought it impossible to come up with any appointment for a senior executive post who is even less fit to serve. But last week, Donald Trump rose to the challenge to tap someone so manifestly unsuited for a spot that even Republicans were taken aback.

Trump picked for acting director of national intelligence current Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, the mastermind behind Trump’s vindictive, spurious inquests into Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) for alleged mortgage fraud. His sole qualification appears to be his eagerness to weaponize the legal system against Trump’s enemies. And if that were not disqualifying for the head of the intelligence community — whose credibility and objectivity are essential to protecting our national security — then his absence of statutorily required national security experience surely should be enough to make him an entirely illegitimate choice.

Very few jobs have statutorily mandated job experience. However, in creating the DNI post, Congress declared, “There is a Director of National Intelligence who shall be appointed by the President.... Any individual nominated for appointment as Director of National Intelligence shall have extensive national security expertise.” No one argues that Pulte has any such expertise (“a high level of specialized skill, knowledge, or judgment in a particular field, acquired through extensive training, study, and hands-on experience”) in national security, let alone “extensive” (“having wide or considerable extent”) expertise.

For once, Republicans reacted with outrage to a horrendous Trump pick. “Very few Senate-confirmable positions come with statutory eligibility requirements. There are good reasons why the Director of National Intelligence is one of them,” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) observed. “Anyone performing this role of such immense public trust must have the extensive national security experience required by statute, and no nominee who falls short of this requirement will earn my vote.” Likewise, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who serves on the Intelligence Committee and was a victim of Trump’s Ken Paxton endorsement, remarked, “The Senate doesn’t have any role to play in terms of confirming acting officials but I see no evidence of any qualifications for that job.”

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Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said simply that all he knew about him was his lack of qualifications. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said, “I don’t know whether he has any intelligence or military background,” adding, “I don’t even know whether he has a security clearance.”

The most damning indictment probably came unintentionally from Trump, who explained his enthusiasm for the pick: “He’s a very smart guy. And he may find out some things about the rigged elections.” Someone committed to finding evidence for debunked conspiracy theories is exactly the last person suited for the role. Trump, however, kept digging when he insisted a “less shackled” DNI should start firing career professionals to shrink the intelligence agency. (Is he trying to sink his pick?)

At least realizing Pulte would never win Senate confirmation, Trump announced Pulte would only serve in the “acting” role, which unfortunately can continue for 210 days. Though the Senate cannot technically block an acting appointment, the Senate has a strong card to play should these Republican national security hawks actually want a DNI with “extensive expertise” (in national security, as opposed to Trump vengeance).

The New York Times reported on Friday:

With just one week left until a key government surveillance authority was set to expire, a deal to renew it faltered in the Senate early Friday morning after Democrats refused to back it because of concerns over President Trump’s recent appointment of Bill Pulte to oversee the nation’s intelligence agencies.

A bloc of Republicans who have long harbored concerns about the spy program joined Democrats to block consideration of a bill that would extend for three years a warrantless wiretapping law known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The vote was 52 to 47, well short of the 60 that would have been needed to move ahead.

Well, that seems to be the solution: No extension of Section 702 authority with Pulte as acting director. (For those with legitimate qualms about the Trump regime’s snooping on Americans in conducting ostensible international security investigations, stalling Section 702 renewal is welcome, regardless of its impact on Pulte.)

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The Pulte faceplant underscores two related political developments. First, given Trump’s plunging approval and the emergence of a block of minimally conscientious Republicans (thanks to Trump’s primary vendettas), Trump cannot count on blind obedience. Second, Democrats therefore have opportunities to halt some of Trump’s most destructive nominees and proposals if they keep their focus on potential Republican allies, the only audience that truly matters right now in these fights in Congress.

In sum, “extensive experience” has no meaning for Trump, who cares only about blind loyalty and moral vapidity. However, if Democrats can convince a handful of Republicans to hold Section 702 at bay if Pulte takes over, they would take a significant step in the direction of insisting that the Senate fulfill its constitutional obligation to provide advice and consent. Reestablishing the notion that people in high government posts should be qualified for them would be welcome. It might even be the beginning of the end of Trump’s brand of DEI that puts dim-witted, morally deficient, and inexperienced white men in jobs for which they are unfit.

Blanche, whom Donald Trump said last week he would nominate for attorney general, has presided over the shoddiest lawyering in the history of the DOJ, which has earned unprecedented denunciations of federal judges (for, among other things, defying court orders and making material misrepresentations to courts), Blanche has been the tip of the spear in Donald Trump’s weaponization of the Justice Department and government-wide corruption operation.

Making clear his first loyalty is to Trump (“I love you, Sir”), not to the Constitution, Blanche has been at the wheel of vindictive prosecutions against Trump enemies, including Kilmar Abrego Garcia, former FBI Director James Comey (in the infamous seashell case), journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort (a First Amendment travesty), and the civil rights legacy organization the Southern Poverty Law Center. He has been instrumental in turning the DOJ into a discredited, weaponized operation that has lost thousands of dedicated lawyers disgusted with the Trump regime.

Although directed to recuse himself from cases in which he represented Trump as a private citizen, he has continued to pursue Trump’s conspiracy-based inquests and investigations. He defended pardons of the violent January 6 felons and then authored the widely denounced (and, for now, discarded) slush-fund-for-secessionists. That deal, coupled with the legally suspect waiver of Trump’s tax liability, gives him the distinction of crafting the most corrupt scheme in presidential history.

However, far and away the single most compelling reason — and potentially the most politically damaging — for denying him the job came from Bondi herself. Blanche’s central role in the Epstein files coverup, which Bondi confirmed, should make his nomination a nonstarter.

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Certainly, there are innumerable reasons for denying the job of heading the Justice Department to someone so obviously lacking independent judgment and respect for the rule of law and who is devoid of credibility, but if there is a single issue that should galvanize Republicans, Democrats, and independents — and pose a lethal threat to Republicans’ control of the Senate — it would be Trump’s demand that Republicans link arms with the Epstein coverup architect.

In her interview with the House Oversight Committee, Bondi struck a blow from which Blanche’s nomination should never recover. CNN, relying on the transcript of her interview, reported, “Bondi sought to distance herself from how her department handled the Epstein files as the Trump administration continues to deal with the political fallout.” Bondi threw Blanche under the bus, testifying, “He was in charge of the process and the entire release of the Epstein files.” Bondi made clear that the decision to withhold 3 million files required by law to be released was not hers.

Blanche also made the bizarre trip to visit Epstein accomplice and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, who then was transferred to cushier surroundings (a move Blanche defended). Why would the No. 2 man at DOJ talk to her when the potential for incriminating testimony (in exchange for a pardon) was all too real?

Again, the Maxwell encounter was not Bondi’s handiwork. The Guardian reported, “During Bondi’s testimony last week, she also told lawmakers that she learned of the controversial prison transfer of Maxwell through news reports ‘after it happened,’ claiming: ‘I had nothing to do with that.’” Does anyone think Blanche was also in the dark?

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The Epstein coverup, of which Blanche is the chief orchestrator, has revealed the moral and legal rot at the core of the Trump regime in a way no other scandal, lawless escapade, or assault on constitutional norms has. In direct violation of the law, Blanche refused to release all documents. At least according to Bondi, he is also responsible for the egregious errors and violations of victims’ privacy in failing to make appropriate redactions. Nothing better epitomizes the abuse of power on behalf of Trump and the creation of a two-tiered system of justice than Blanche’s Epstein handiwork.

It’s not simply the magnitude of the Epstein debacle that should push it to the top of the reasons to block Blanche’s nomination. The Epstein scandal was the first and remains the hottest flashpoint between Trump and his Republican base and thereby offers the most promise for peeling off Republican support for Blanche. In effect, Trump is asking the Senate to give a stamp of approval to the man who defied their own legislative directive to release all the files.

The Epstein coverup is the first serious breach with Senate and House Republicans; the first time Trump was unable to fend off a politically harmful vote (on the Epstein Files Transparency Act). Asking the Senate to confirm Blanche would amount to a demand the Senate affirm and continue the corrupt coverup at the expense of Epstein’s victims and any semblance of the rule of law.

Asking senators to ignore Blanche’s violations of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, his dissembling about Maxwell, and his arrogant refusal to respond to Congress’s legitimate concerns and reward Blanche with the top law enforcement job should be a complete dealbreaker.

For Republican senators up for re-election (Maine’s Susan Collins, Ohio’s Jon Husted, Alaska’s Dan Sullivan) as well as newly unmuzzled Republicans (John Cornyn of Texas and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana) and Republicans most resistant to demands to fall in line behind the MAGA cult (Rand Paul of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska), the implications of Blanche’s nomination could not be clearer: A vote to confirm Blanche is a vote to continue the coverup and inflict egregious harm on Epstein’s victims.

In sum, Democrats would be wise to be strategic in their opposition to Blanche. Throwing the kitchen sink at him may be satisfying, but taking Democrats and those already inclined to oppose Blanche down the memory of lane of his offenses should not be the aim. If the goal is to stop Blanche, defenders of decency, the rule of law, and the rights of abuse victims should drill down on Trump’s worst scandal and most vulnerable issue.

Delaney Hall is facing accountability

At the Delaney Hall immigration facility, politicians such as Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) have shown up at personal risk to call attention to the horrific conditions for detainees and the abusive conduct toward protestors.

In addition, New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport and Gov. Mikie Sherrill filed suit against the GEO Group Inc., which operates Delaney Hall, demanding it provide full access to health inspectors or face closure. The city of Newark filed its own action and lifted the curfew that was imposed, ostensibly to reduce conflict between protestors and state officials.

As the New York Times reported, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka moved in to take control on the ground after widespread criticism of state police tactics:

Baraka said that the state officials were handing greater control to the city after the state police failed to cool tensions between the demonstrators and federal immigration enforcement officers. He said that the city planned to remove protest zones that had limited demonstrators’ movements and would lean on street teams largely made up of clergy and community activists to keep the peace.... Mr. Baraka said that the state police used tactics that only made matters worse as the protests grew during the weekend.

In sum, neither stonewalling by the Department of Homeland Security nor ham-handed police tactics by New Jersey state police have been able to silence critics. Rather than intimidate protests, the effort to silence criticism and block investigation backfired. A persistent, disciplined effort undertaken by federal and local officials, litigators, and ordinary Americans to challenge brutality and lawlessness is forcing accountability on the private prison system.

Ukraine persists

On the physical battlefield against authoritarian aggression, Ukraine has defied the odds and turned the tide against Russian invaders. “A small but growing number of European officials and analysts are saying what four years ago was unthinkable: Ukraine isn’t just surviving its grueling war with Russia, it is in some ways thriving and may even be on a path to victory,” Defense One reported. Though Russian aerial barrages kill innocent people and cause great damage, Ukraine has intercepted the vast majority of them. Moreover, Ukraine has taken the fight to Russia’s homeland to shatter the illusion of security for the Russian population. (In a brazen move, as the BBC reported, “Ukraine has carried out a strike on the outskirts of Russia’s St Petersburg, hours before the opening of a major economic forum designed to attract foreign investment into the country.”)

Ukraine’s AI and drone technology, its willingness to experiment with new tactics, and its development of a sophisticated domestic defense industry have overcome Russia’s overwhelming numbers and a cynical government’s willingness to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of its own people. Ukraine is demonstrating that a thugocracy stultified by corruption, rigidity, and fear is no match for a democracy that benefits from an informed, engaged citizenry, free dialogue and scientific innovation.

Despite threats and pressure from Vladamir Putin stooge Donald Trump, Ukraine seems to have plenty of cards these days. That is why Putin (not unlike Trump in Iran) finds himself trapped in a costly forever war that has served only to undermine his support. As Foreign Affairs explained:

Stopping the fighting now would mean economic dislocation, social upheaval, and a political reckoning the regime is not prepared to face. Moscow, in other words, has stumbled into a war trap that no one designed and no one can easily dismantle. …

He cannot demobilize without setting off a vast unemployment and reintegration crisis. He cannot cut defense spending without devastating the regions and industries that depend on it. And he cannot abandon the narrative of existential struggle without undermining the legitimacy on which his authority rests.

So, Russia plods along at the cost of thousands of deaths each week, further economic hardship, and increased social discord. Trump’s efforts to bully Ukraine into submission have failed. He should spend more time persuading Putin to look for an off ramp. It’s Russia that desperately needs to end this debacle.

Heroic defense of free press

Veteran CBS reporter Scott Pelley channeled the frustrations of his colleagues, conscientious journalists throughout legacy and independent media, and anyone who cherishes a free press when he denounced CBS News chief Bari Weiss and her new executive producer of 60 Minutes, Nick Bilton. Pelley’s refreshing candor in confronting Bilton face to face (after a bloodbath of firings the previous week) served to debunk Weiss’s claims of devotion to the program (she is murdering it, he declared). He also called out their lack of qualifications (so much for merit in MAGA-friendly environs) and denounced efforts to manipulate facts and inject bias. He cut through the fog of cringeworthy platitudes that have poured out of Black Rock since Trump booster David Ellison took control of the network. (As remarkable as Pelley’s interrogation of his boss was, the naivete of CBS’s new management was even more stunning. They plainly underestimated the tenacity of real journalists — and wound up embarrassed when, of course, an audio of the meeting leaked.)

At an editorial meeting after Pelley’s firing was announced, Weiss sounded whiny and defensive, insisting, “Despite our attempts to engage with Scott Pelley and to find a way back, unfortunately we weren’t able to do so, and so we had to part ways.” She added: “We did not want that to happen, but that’s the path that he chose.” Pelley swiftly denounced that as a lie, again exposing Weiss’s lack of credibility.

Pelley’s stand undermined any claim that Ellison, Weiss, and Bilton are independent figures acting in the best traditions of journalism. He stripped the pretense of legitimacy, which is key to undermining their effectiveness, and robbed them of any claim to independence. He also reminded journalists of their obligation to speak truth to power not only in government but also in their own outlets and to resist manipulation and censorship.

What democracy defenders have in common

In very different contexts, the coordinated effort to end abuse at Delaney Hall, the Ukrainians’ defense of their homeland, and the courageous stance taken by Scott Pelley (backed up by many of his coworkers) attest to the strength of the pro-democracy movement. Undaunted, unintimidated, and uncompromising, those who value democratic norms and institutions have shown they can prevail against entrenched forces that use violence, bullying, threats, and lies to cling to power. We salute those who fight authoritarian oppressors at Delaney Hall, the Kremlin, and CBS/Paramount — which, despite a great deal of bluster, looked small, defensive, and inept in the face of principled resistance.

Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically, I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into ‘NEVER NEVER LAND.’

Essentially taking his ball and going home, he declared he would “make all necessary arrangements with Congress to allow a full and complete transfer of this Institution, giving them the responsibility for its Operation, Maintenance, and Management.” (In a weekend of hissy fits, he also angrily canceled his Freedom 250 concert after a long list of musicians cancelled. Sad!)

The Kennedy Center ruling wouldn’t be the first time Trump essentially threw in the towel after an adverse court decision. His DOJ lackeys have decided against appealing some of Trump’s myriad legal losses (although when DOJ tried to back down from suing law firms, Trump jumped in to stop the retreat). That said, the Kennedy Center was something in which Trump was personally invested. His lack of interest in appealing such a rebuke is unusual for him, the sort of fit of pique you see from cranky seniors.

This incident would be striking enough, but Trump also walked away from his $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund. (The Wall Street Journal’s reporting last week suggested Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche “hadn’t anticipated the level of backlash the fund has generated among Repzublican lawmakers.” If true, this confirms Blanche is not the sharpest knife in the drawer.)

As soon as the slush-fund-for-insurrectionists deal was announced, Republicans (for once, finding a Trump outrage they could not swallow) and Democrats condemned the deal, halting progress on the Department of Homeland Security funding bill. By late last week, two courts stepped in to disrupt what was arguably the single most corrupt gambit in presidential history. Former Vice President Mike Pence, in tune with many U.S. senators, including the “Wounded Bear Caucus,” weighed in as well on Sunday’s Face the Nation: “The idea of creating a fund that could compensate people who assaulted police officers and vandalized the Capitol that day is totally unacceptable. My hope is the administration will drop it, drop the idea entirely.”

By early this week, at least the slush fund portion of the “settlement” was dead, although Blanche refused to put it in writing. However, the part of the noxious scheme agreeing to release Trump and his family from all liability for audits underway remained in place, despite real concerns about its legality and even potential criminal liability for those who brokered the deal.

Democrats intend to force votes during reconciliation on this corrupt bargain, perhaps leading to yet another humiliating defeat for Trump. Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams in Miami, who reopened Trump’s taxes case in response to the ethics issues raised by 35 former judges, may still want to examine this part of the deal. We will see if, in the face of congressional opposition and a possible embarrassing court inquiry probing the legality of the bargain, Trump again walks away.

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The Kennedy Center and slush fund fiascos are not the only Trump ego/vengeance projects that have stalled out. Trump’s pet projects (e.g., the ballroom, his face on a $250 bill, the eyesore arch, his golf course takeover, revenge prosecutions) have all gotten bogged down, many in losing court fights. Republicans went so far as to take funding from the ballroom out of the DHS funding bill. (If not pre-midterms, then once the Democrats win majorities in one or both houses, funds for many of these gambits will disappear.)

As with his self-glorification antics, Trump is not getting his way very often these days when it comes to big policy matters. He got himself trapped between making a cruddy Iran deal that would expose him to humiliation and scorn (from his own party) or resuming a war for which he lacks public and congressional support (and for which he may lack funds and munitions). When Iran broke off talks on Monday, he sounded relieved. Like a petulant teenager, he says such talks “bored” him. Perhaps he simply loathed having his failure in the daily headlines.

The House vote passing the War Powers Act resolution delivered another stinging vote of no confidence on Trump. (The measure will go back to the Senate now.) At this point, he may, as many predicted, walk away from the war and leave it to others to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Again. Trump may find abandoning the war in a huff preferable to dragging out his ordeal. To him, that’s better than getting mocked for reaching a deal worse than the JCPOA at a much higher cost.

With his domestic agenda in no better shape (the reconciliation bill has been in disarray, as have defense appropriations) it is easy to forget that all this losing is happening while Trump still has the majority in both houses. For a president we keep hearing has his “grip” on the party, he does not appear inclined to even get his domestic allies to do very much.

Trump’s temper tantrums undoubtedly will multiply if he loses control of either house. Without doormats in Congress, Trump will not have much to do after the midterms other than rail at the media, his opponents, judges, and ungrateful voters. As frustrated, huffy, and aggrieved as he is already, he may soon look back upon this time as his regime’s glory days. No more rubber stamps for vanity projects, tax cuts for the rich, or lavish spending on Immigration and Customs Enforcement shock troops and concentration camps.

Moreover, Trump would have more than gridlock to fear if Democrats wind up in power in either house. Trump and his underlings will face investigations, whistleblower complaints, subpoenas, and possible impeachment proceedings. Nominees who lied to Congress may face criminal referrals. Pentagon brass may be called to testify, lose Senate approval for promotions, and face potential military discipline over alleged war crimes. We should expect that if the midterms go poorly for Republicans, Trump suppliants in the Cabinet who beclowned themselves with fawning and oversized shoes may stampede out the door trying to avoid subpoenas.

Democrats should make certain Trump and his regime flunkies know exactly what to expect. Democratic leadership should announce they will appropriate no funds for vanity projects (and charge him for demolishing the East Wing), put a moratorium on Trump-named public structures, pass stringent rules barring stock trades for all three branches, claw back illegal emoluments, and set up a joint investigative committee to probe corruption and lawlessness both by the regime and those who curried favor. (We might even hear legal scholars’ testimony that his alleged insider trading could not possibly be considered a core executive function for which the Supreme Court has extended criminal immunity.)

It’s a good thing Trump is getting practice now in the art of taking his ball and going home. It is about to get more excruciating. In a gusher of political karma, the pathological narcissist in chief will be looking at repeated defeats (followed by humiliating U-turns), public snubs, and growing irrelevance — in other words, a two-year “hopeless journey into NEVER NEVER LAND.”

Trump-endorsed Hinson, who just acknowledged that the Iran war is a drag on Republicans, is no longer considered a slam dunk, even in a state where Republicans outnumber Democrats in party registration by over 8 points. As The Daily Beast reported, “Iowa constituents have been hit particularly hard by Trump’s war, which has claimed the lives of six Army Reserve soldiers from the Des Moines-based 103rd Sustainment Command who were killed in an Iranian strike on a facility in Kuwait.”

With Iowa’s farm economy in extreme distress, “Iowa Democrats see an opening, especially as one of the states where recent special elections have seen notable shifts towards Democrats even as voters have soured on the national party’s brand,” NPR reported.

Disastrous MAGA policies have handed Democrats a compelling batch of campaign issues. First and foremost, the rural healthcare system is collapsing, creating a health and economic disaster accelerated by Republicans’ draconian Medicaid cuts. Turek’s personal health struggles and reliance as a child on Medicaid make him particularly effective on the issue.

High tariffs, another self-destructive Trump gambit, cut off Iowans’ access to critical overseas markets, spread economic distress, and may lead to more farm bankruptcies. Trump’s trade war with China has crushed soybean farming in Iowa (the No. 2 state for soybeans after Illinois.) As Bloomberg News reported, “US-China flows were halted for months and some Chinese buyers turned to South American producers.” Exports plunged from $12.6 billion in 2024 under President Biden to just $3.1B billion in 2025 under Trump, improving only marginally this year.

Trump’s Iran war debacle compounded that economic shock. “Trump’s war with Iran and the restrictions on the Strait of Hormuz — a key shipping lane in the Middle East — has also sent fertilizer prices surging just as planting season is beginning,” Bloomberg noted. Fertilizer prices are expected to jump by about a third, to the highest level since Russia launched the Ukraine war. Adding to their economic woes, Iowans now pay (on average) $4.65 per gallon for diesel, up from $2.73 last year.

Turek, a 4-time Paralympic Games basketball player who was born with spina bifida, was savvy enough to capitalize on this assortment of affordability issues during the primary campaign. Claiming prairie populist Sen. Tom Harkin as his political inspiration and mentor, he refused to be categorized as a left-winger. He advocated for “a living wage, affordable housing, healthcare and public education — all while rooting out corruption.” Pointing to his record in winning a Republican-leaning state (rather than vowing to take down Democratic leadership, as his opponent Wahls did), he has argued, “This is not a red state. This is a common-sense state that has masqueraded as more red than we are.”

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Iowa’s problems did not spring up overnight. Under one-party GOP governance, Iowa’s economy is in decline. With the state ranking 46^th in growth, younger, better-educated people are fleeing the state. “In 2008, 47% of Iowa’s college students planned to stay in the state after graduation. That dropped to 41% in 2024,” Iowa Public Radio reported recently. “That’s a big concern in a state where many businesses are already seeing a worker shortage.”

An Iowa think tank, the Common Sense Institute Iowa, explained, “Iowa’s economy [loses] an estimated $4.5 million in total gross nominal earnings over the working life of each out-migrating, college-educated Iowan age 25-29.” Moreover, the cost of out-migration amounts to “an astounding $6.1 billion in lost gross domestic product (GDP) over the working life of those who leave.”

Something is not working for average people, and those who remain in Iowa face a gloomy forecast unless something changes dramatically. Turek has put the state’s long- and short-term economic woes in the context of a political system rigged by the oligarchy’s growing power and wealth. Arguing that it is “nearly impossible” for young people to find careers, he describes scenes of desolation, as if “a vacuum has come through and just sucked it out of there, just because we have policies in place that have only benefited billionaires and multinational corporations.” His answer to this problem? Elect leaders “who are going to actually fight for the middle class and fight for our workers, and fight for small businesses and for rural communities.”

Turek makes the case that Hinson and the policies she has supported have contributed to the burdens weighing down average people. “Ashley Hinson is Joni [“Well we are all going to die”] Ernst 2.0, arguably worse,” he said. “She is someone who voted for the Big, Beautiful Bill ... just to give tax breaks to billionaires.” He adds: “She’s also someone who has voted four times in favor of the Trump tariffs, which has led us to lead the nation in farm foreclosures. It’s absolute ‘farmageddon’ for our farmers. She’s not looking out for Iowans or the middle class.”

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That might remind you of Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico’s populist message: “The biggest divide in politics is not right vs. left, but top vs. bottom.” That is no coincidence. In both Iowa and Texas, Democrats have found a receptive audience for the classic Democratic message that they will stand up for the little guy and gal against the rich and powerful, who rig the system in their favor at ordinary Americans’ expense.

Turek and Talarico will test the proposition that Democrats with an effective message centered on the economy and corruption can win in the heartland. We would experience a sea change in national politics if articulate, compelling Democratic candidates break through with a populist message in states Trump won comfortably in 2024.

If Democrats prevail, they should recognize that victories like these would never have been possible without Trump’s grotesque corruption, war on average workers, and utter indifference to rural Americans’ pain. And it will be rubber stamps — such as Hinson — who will pay the price for sycophancy in service of a president concerned only about himself.

Dear Contrarian Friends:

Many of you have asked about my absence from Coffee With the Contrarians. You may have noticed I have been experiencing hoarseness and vocal strain. As much as I hate to miss one of my favorite parts of The Contrarian, I will use my voice very sparingly over the short term so that I can return later this summer at full strength for CWC’s and interviews. And of course, my “voice” will be on the page in daily columns, as it is below.

Thank you for your concern and for your ongoing support for The Contrarian!

Jen

‘Perfect’ for whom?

Donald Trump, feeling blowback from Republican Party hawks who have grasped that the Iran war has been a disaster that delivered on none of his promises, insists he would only make a “perfect” deal to end the fighting. His comment that he is not thinking about Americans’ finances, he insists, was the “perfect” statement. And he likewise proclaimed his health, after his third “annual” exam in 13 months, to be “perfect.” It just might be that Trump’s “perfect” means something other than its actual definition: “being entirely without fault or defect.”

The Iran deal under review is, predictably, perfectly awful for the United States’ strategic interests, which might explain why Trump is dragging his feet on deciding to accept it. As foreign policy guru Dan Drezner put it, “It only took three months for Trump and his policy principals to realize that all of the assumptions it had made going into the conflict were wrong.” Those faulty assumptions include the expectation that the Iranian regime would crumble, the Strait of Hormuz would remain open, the world economy and energy markets would be unaffected, and Iran’s cheap drones would be no match for our exorbitantly expensive missiles. (A perfect score — 0 for 4! — for the Iranians.)

Trump thought he would get an “unconditional surrender.” But the war’s biggest cheerleaders, as the New York Times reported, are “especially exasperated,” fearing that Trump is about to “relieve pressure on Iran in order to reopen the strait without winning firm Iranian commitments to surrender its nuclear material and stop enriching uranium.”

Having seized the Strait of Hormuz, “Tehran has shown it can effectively close it in the future,” Jonathan Lemire and Nancy A. Youssef wrote for The Atlantic. “At a minimum, the regime has a greater understanding of the economic weapon it wields.” Trump seems to have given up on the demand that Iran ship its enriched materials out of the country and permanently forgo enrichment. (And neither the subject of Iran’s missiles nor its support for terrorist groups seems to come up.) Meanwhile, Iran is poised to get back $17.5B in frozen assets and maybe gain a $300B “investment fund,” dwarfing the puny $1.7B in “pallets of cash” Iran received in conjunction with the JCPOA (a deal that actually constrained its nuclear program with tough inspection measures).

While the deal represents an embarrassing humiliation for Trump, his options are limited. Take the crummy deal, or restart a hugely unpopular war (one which Republicans may even block) that would lead to more casualties (especially if we send in land forces), further erode our scant supply of munitions, and, in all likelihood, produce another inconclusive result. That likely explains why he is dragging this out interminably, continuing to fiddle with a deal to make it “tougher,” in a vain attempt to conceal his strategic debacle. And, as he invariably does, he chose to blame the… Democrats!? … when it is Republican Iran hawks who are fit to be tied.

As for Trump’s “perfect” statement of indifference to the number one issue on the minds of voters, Trump might have made a Kinsley gaffe when he let on that he does not think about Americans’ finances (and, to boot, does not care about the midterms). Democrats think this is the perfect soundbite for the midterm campaign, prompting them to line up to take their swings at the president. Democratic politicians who have argued that Trump “doesn’t care if you can afford groceries or gas” (Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker), “does not care about the economic pain he is causing Americans” (New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker) and just “doesn’t give a damn” (Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries) have been vindicated.

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Trump seems determined to prove he cares nothing about Americans’ hardships. While they struggle with soaring gas prices, he is fixated on gold plating horse statues (you cannot make up this stuff), repainting the Mall’s historic reflecting pool to resemble a local YMCA lap pool, turning the White House into a sort of Six Flags amusement park for his cheesy UFC fight event, putting his mug on a $250 bill (roughly what it soon may cost to fill up your tank), and constructing what veterans have called an “appalling” arch blocking the view from Arlington National Cemetery. Each garish tribute to his own fragile ego advertises that he is in this only for himself. The humiliating snubs (first the Kennedy Center, then Freedom 250) and resulting meltdowns reinforce his image as a petulant toddler. (Getting stood up by musical has-beens and having to “headline” his own event is about as pathetic as throwing your own birthday party/military parade, which then no one attends.)

Finally, Trump’s “perfect” health claim is fast becoming a punchline for a nap-prone president with discolored hands, swollen ankles, declining self-control, and consistently slurred, incoherent speech. Margaret Sullivan channels the attitude of most Americans (who think he is not mentally or physically competent):

Given what’s obvious to the naked eye, and what’s logical given his advanced age, the Trump White House owes the American public — and the world — quite a bit more than the usual bombast and bragging.

What tests did he take? What were the results?

Does he have some sort of condition (as former vice-president Dick Cheney’s cardiologist, Dr Jonathan Reiner, suggested recently on CNN) like “severe daytime somnolence” that is causing him to fall asleep during the day? Does that relate in some way to possible dementia, as Reiner suggested it might?

The release late Friday night of a cursory, suspect medical report did little to convince either medical professionals or skeptical Americans that he is in peak physical condition.

Trump’s laughable claims of perfection have become a “tell” that he is covering for a humiliating disaster. Let’s face it: the Iran deal is perfectly awful, his indifference to Americans’ economic plight is perfect fodder for Democrats, and his obviously rotten health is the perfect argument for requiring presidents to release all their mental and physical health records.

No surprise, then, that Republicans fear the perfect storm in November will sweep them out of power.

“The American people” overwhelmingly disapprove of Trump’s performance because they know they are not getting “paradise,” let alone “extraordinary paradise.” (Is there such a thing as mediocre paradise?) Trump’s overall approval has dropped in many polls to the mid-30’s. On inflation, Trump’s polling is the worst of any president ever. Trump’s results are truly “extraordinary” because he has managed to create broad consensus in a sharply divided country that his performance, especially on the economy, is horrible.

Trump’s dismal poll numbers, if they follow the deteriorating economic environment, may get even worse. “A measure of inflation closely watched by the Federal Reserve accelerated in April to a three-year high, reinforcing the central bank’s budding support to consider raising interest rates if price pressures do not ease,” the New York Times reported last week. “The Personal Consumption Expenditures index rose 3.8 percent from the same time last year. It was the fastest annual pace since May 2023, when the Fed was in the midst of raising rates to tame a burst of inflation that had emerged in the wake of the pandemic.” With numbers like that, not even Trump “sock puppet” Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh is going to push through rate cuts anytime soon.

Trump says the economy is “hot.” Maybe a hot mess. “The U.S. economy grew more slowly during the first three months of the year,” the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. “Gross domestic product, a broad measure of the goods and services produced across the U.S., rose at a 1.6% seasonally and inflation-adjusted annual rate in January through March, the Commerce Department said Thursday.”

Americans accurately perceive that they are falling behind. Simply put, inflation is outpacing wages. “From April 2025 to April 2026, real average hourly earnings decreased 0.3 percent, seasonally adjusted,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last month. This amounts to genuine hardship for many American families, as a new Brookings Institution study just reported. Since many families cannot readily control significant parts of their budget (e.g., housing, childcare), “closing that gap between essentials and income has meant skipped meals, increased debt and delayed medical care.”

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Two data points illustrate Americans’ struggle to make ends meet.

First, with wages lagging inflation, Americans are increasingly relying on credit card debt. “In the first quarter of this year, the percentage of credit-card balances that were at least 90 days delinquent rose to 13.12%, according to data released in May by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “That’s the highest level in 15 years, and the most since the period following the 2008 financial crisis.” With families stretched to the breaking point, future household purchases will need to decline to manage families’ debt load.

Second, the University of Michigan’s survey of consumer sentiment plunged to the lowest level since 1978. As Market Watch explained:

Sentiment was worse in May than at any point during the 2020-21 coronavirus pandemic. It was also worse than at any point during the financial crisis of 2008-09. And it was even worse than at any point during the tumultuous period of 1980-82, when the U.S. suffered two recessions, 11% inflation and 18% mortgage rates.

Moreover, economic pain is not felt evenly. The New York Fed reports that inflation has hit lower- and middle-class families — who spend a greater share on essentials like food and housing — hardest. As a result, food insecurity, aggravated by cuts to SNAP, has increased. “Households have struggled with the expiration of pandemic-era [food] aid … [R]ecently, President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ tightened the work requirements for SNAP benefits.” The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently found that in 12 states, 700,000 fewer children are receiving SNAP food; “nearly half of the 1.6-million-person decline among people of all ages in those states.” The MAGA agenda’s war on families has taken its toll:

The new law’s cost shift has led states to take steps that are making it harder for eligible people to receive SNAP, including families with children. Losing SNAP also makes it harder for low-income children to qualify for other food assistance, such as WIC and free school meals — jeopardizing the short- and long-term health, education, and economic benefits of nutrition programs for our children and society.

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All this may seem like “paradise” to Stephen Miller and Trump’s other lickspittles, but Americans who are falling behind, burning through savings, relying on credit card debt, and deciding whether to skip meals or a doctor’s visit likely perceive this as amounting to economic hell.

Some people certainly do think Trump has delivered “paradise.” The Jan. 6 violent insurrections, already pardoned, are thrilled about Trump’s $1.8B taxpayer-financed slush fund (although two federal judges have stepped in to block the outrageous scheme). Vulcan Elements, in which Donald Trump Jr. invested, got a sweetheart $620M loan after intervention by Peter Navarro. (This would make Hunter Biden blush.) And Trump has been a godsend for private prisons that make a fortune exploiting ICE detainees and for no-bid contractors who get to work on Trump’s vanity projects.

In addition, Trump’s reign must seem like paradise to the additional 10,000 White South African “refugees” who benefit from the immigration cap raised exclusively for them. (Since October, the Trump regime has allowed in thousands of Afrikaners but only 3 nonwhite Afghan refugees — a minuscule share of those who risked their lives to aid U.S. troops.)

Trump regime certainly has delivered paradise for the hodgepodge of donors, supporters, and hangers-on ranging from crypto kings to convicted fraudsters to Middle East sheiks to Big Oil. Collectively, they have reaped rewards including: “Cabinet and executive branch positions, ambassadorships, pardons and commutations, dropped investigations or enforcement actions, corporate-friendly policies and perks, and even foreign policy actions.”

Finally, the MAGA era has been heaven on earth for sundry sexual abusers: men identified in the Epstein files who remain shielded from accountability, hordes of accused harassers, and sex predator Adam Dean Hoffman, who got out of jail with a slap on the wrist, thanks to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

In short, the “American people” who think Trump is delivering paradise are the super-rich (who have gotten richer with more tax cuts); pardoned (and rewarded!) felons; white supremacists (who welcomed thousands of Afrikaners, received affirmed action for mediocrities and incompetents, and gained power from MAGA justices’ rollback of voting rights); presidential relatives and cronies; decrepit autocrats; and incompetent media lackeys.

Meanwhile, ordinary Americans are worse off under Trump’s corrupt authoritarian rule. Fortunately, they will have the chance in November to let Trump and Republicans know this is not their idea of paradise.

“The majority-Black district held for 34 years by South Carolina Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn will survive intact, for now, after Republican state lawmakers rejected a plan to redraw congressional maps,” NPR reported. Clyburn responded: “A critical number of Republicans did not believe in putting a man over the law. Today, members of the South Carolina State Senate stood up for the constitutional principles that they say they believe in.”

Some Republican lawmakers (unlike the partisan hacks on the Supreme Court) refused to confuse voters by imposing a new map in an election for which early voting was already underway. Others had personal relationships with Clyburn, who has been a giant in the State and delivered billions in federal funding for his constituents. And self-interest certainly played a role as well: By packing Black voters into Clyburn’s district, the others remain solidly Republican.

Credit goes to Clyburn, who refused to go into retirement quietly. By insisting on running for re-election, he saved Democrats, at least for one election, a seat that Republicans would otherwise have snatched before the midterms.

Regardless of the reason Republicans backed down, no one should underestimate the significance of Republicans’ failure to remove the only Black congressman from a state infamous for leading secession from the Union in 1860. Jace Woodrum, Executive Director of the ACLU of South Carolina, in a written statement, asserted:

Don’t let anyone tell you that our political fate is set in stone. Remember that showing up and fighting for democracy still matters. South Carolinians from all walks of life showed up to give testimony, to call and write to our lawmakers, to lift our voices in protest, and finally to cast ballots in record-breaking numbers on the first day of primary voting. There are powerful people who want you to believe that showing up doesn’t matter. But we the people still hold the power, and representative democracy is still standing. After we made our voices heard, lawmakers from both political parties finally saw that the rush to redistrict hurts voters — and they did the right thing.

MAGA politicians are counting on voters’ despondency and cynicism to make the reimposition of Jim Crow as pain-free for Republicans as possible. But Democrats’ refusal to concede and determination to build momentum, using key events and political battles to drive organization and turnout, will aid both their fight to flip the House in November and their long-term mission to restore democracy.

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On the same day as the victory in South Carolina, the Congressional Black Caucus released a letter urging corporate America “to defend our nation’s democratic principles and publicly reaffirm its commitment to voting rights and equal representation amid growing attacks on fair representation and Black political and economic power in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais.”

Citing a letter to Congress from 200 corporations issued 5 years ago demanding reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, the CBC called on corporations once more, to publicly condemn “efforts to dilute Black voting strength and dismantle the protections of the Voting Rights Act” and to engage with civil rights groups. They urged corporations to attend “a national convening alongside civil rights leaders, advocates, and movement organizations to discuss the urgent defense of voting rights and Black political power in America.”

Only a whole-of-society push (in state government, the business community, electoral politics, etc.) with a broad coalition across the political spectrum can defend voting rights and recover pluralistic democracy. Despite the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision, the courts can still afford some protection.

A three-judge federal district panel in Alabama considered Allen v. Milligan in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Callais decision, which held that intentional discrimination could still be grounds for striking down a map. The panel (with two Trump-appointed judges and one Clinton-appointee) held that even under the MAGA majority’s latest opinion, a congressional map with only a single Black congressional district could not stand:

[W]e cannot see our way clear to requiring Alabamians to cast their votes in the 2026 elections under a districting plan tainted by intentional race-based discrimination. And under the unusual circumstances of this case, we conclude that a limited order requiring the Secretary to continue using this Court’s race-blind map will not disrupt Alabama’s elections (all candidates ran under the race-blind map until fifteen days ago, and all voters remain districted under the race-blind map in electoral computer systems). We do not lightly intrude in state affairs, but our previous review of the undisputed evidence left us in no doubt that Alabama’s legislatively enacted plan (the “2023 Plan”) intentionally discriminated based on race in violation of the Constitution. Our re-examination in light of Callais yields the same conclusion.

The panel reiterated that there was no evidence of partisan gerrymandering (blessed by Callais). This was intentional, undisguised racial discrimination.

Alabama immediately appealed. We should not be surprised if the MAGA Supreme Court majority, having opened the door a sliver to permit certain VRA claims (for intentional discrimination), slams it shut in Alabama voters’ faces. Nevertheless, in that event, the 3-judge panel would at least have smoked out the MAGA hacks who all but struck down the VRA in its entirety. We will find out if the MAGA justices (as many voting rights advocates believe) are determined to defend any Republican-friendly map, no matter how blatantly discriminatory.

Janai Nelson, president and director-counsel of LDF, who argued Callais at the Supreme Court, reacted to the three-judge panel’s opinion: “Our teams have been working nonstop around the clock since the Callais decision to defend the maps in Alabama. This is a critical victory [and] affirmation that Black voters deserve fair maps.”

Victories in South Carolina and Alabama are the direct result of undaunted, unflagging, and unapologetic activists, civil rights lawyers, elected leaders, and organizations laboring to defend voting rights. In the case of Alabama, credit goes to the two conscientious Trump-appointed judges who insisted that the law still guaranteed two Black-majority districts.

The fight to undo Callais’ noxious legacy and secure voting rights will take years. However, this was inarguably a positive week, thanks to dogged voting rights activists who refuse to accept it as the final word on our 250-year experiment in multi-racial democracy.

Not one to look beyond immediate gratification, Trump likely could not pass up the thrill of at least seeming to manipulate his base to do his bidding, regardless of the results in the general election. He nevertheless procrastinated until the campaign’s closing days, when Paxton’s lead was already secure (and the risk of Trump’s embarrassment low).

Paxton has been Democrats’ dream opponent. “Since he became a state official more than ten years ago, he’s fended off criminal indictments, whistleblower allegations and an impeachment by the Texas House,” Houston Public Media recounted. “He was acquitted in the Texas Senate. His estranged wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, filed for divorce last summer on ‘biblical grounds.’” And that does not even include his Herculean efforts to invalidate the Affordable Care Act and overturn the 2020 election; zealous litigation to criminalize abortion; frivolous attempt to criminally investigate Beto O’Rourke; unrelenting attacks on immigrant nonprofit groups; alleged racist enforcement of voting laws; and an absurd plea deal sentencing former Waco Attorney Adam Hoffman “to 60 days in county jail for his sexual abuse of a minor over the course of several years.”

While the hardcore MAGA primary voters embraced Paxton, one can imagine millions of right-leaning independents and Republicans may be turned off by such a character. How many of those voters will flip in the general election to Democratic nominee state senator James Talarico, or just stay home?

Paxton’s win certainly puts Texas in play for Democrats, as G. Elliott Morris explains, thanks to “a potentially very weak Republican nominee in Paxton (scandal-ridden, polling 2-3 points behind Cornyn in head-to-heads against Talarico), a Democratic recruit who plays well with independents and suburban voters, eye-popping primary turnout numbers, a diversifying Democratic electorate, a continued Latino swing back toward Democrats in special elections, and Trump’s poor numbers in the state.”

Trump does not apparently care that taking down a Republican who would be more electable in November could deprive himself of a Senate majority. As he explained when backing Paxton, who he claimed “was also very loyal to your favorite President, ME,” over Republican stalwart Cornyn (“VERY disloyal to me”), it is all about him.

Ever since Trump endorsed Paxton, Senate Republicans have been hopping mad, but could they have been surprised? As Politico reported recently:

Republicans are coming to grips with a president who less than six months out from the midterms is focused on racking up a body count of lawmakers who have crossed him, asserting his control over his party and burnishing his legacy — putting the GOP legislative agenda and the survival of its majorities at risk.

They should have figured this out months, if not years, ago: Trump cares not one wit about their careers or agenda. Trump’s handling of the Epstein files or his anti-immigrant overreach (which forfeited Republicans’ advantage on their strongest issue) might have been clues.

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Paxton very likely would have won the primary comfortably without Trump’s help. But having endorsed Paxton, Trump will not be able to hide from the fierce backlash if, as many Republicans fear, Paxton loses in November.

A Paxton primary victory aided and abetted by a wholly self-absorbed president would give Texas Democrats their first statewide win since 1994 (and the first elected U.S. senator since 1988) and deliver what could be the seat determining which party holds the majority. Moreover, a Talarico win would unleash sheer panic in Republican ranks.

The potential that Texas — Republicans’ richest electoral treasure trove and its ideological home base since George HW Bush — could slip through their fingers would be a fitting comeuppance for a party that has jettisoned every principle, parroted every Trump inanity, and twisted itself in knots struggling to cling to power.

Between now and November, Paxton’s nomination may well torment Republicans. In addition to unleashing another senator more willing to buck Trump for his remaining months in office, Paxton’s nomination means Republicans will have to fork out tens of millions of dollar trying to save a seat that would ordinarily be, at the very worst, “likely” Republican.

“National Republicans are growing increasingly worried that having Paxton as the nominee will force them to spend massively to hold onto the seat, sucking away resources from other top battlegrounds,” Politico reported. “Some among the GOP donor class say that if Paxton prevails the general election will be Trump’s problem to deal with, and think he will need to deploy MAGA Inc.’s $300 million war chest.” Even if Trump is willing to spend his own money (and why not hang onto it for another coup or his post-presidency?), MAGA Inc. millions spent on Paxton won’t be available for other races. No wonder Senate Republicans are seething.

In addition, down ballot Republicans in Texas will rightfully worry that Paxton will depress turnout and/or make it impossible for them to distance themselves from the most wackadoodle elements in the party. Paxton’s nomination compounds the difficulty Texas Republicans will have in holding on to re-redistricted seats whose lines were drawn with the (faulty) assumption that Hispanics would stick with the party.

Even worse, just as Republican nominee for the Senate Rep. Todd Akins (R-MO) became the poster boy for extremism and hostility to women in 2012, Paxton may well become the national avatar for MAGA craziness and scandal in 2026. What better example of dysfunction and grotesque corruption could Democrats ask for in making the case that we need a Senate to check (not accelerate) Trump’s mayhem and graft? (If things are bad now, imagine a MAGA controlled Senate with the likes of Paxton calling the shots.)

Certainly, if Democrats are to win this very Republican state, they will have to spend and organize as they have not done in Texas for decades. They must intensify outreach to Black and Hispanic voters. Still, while this remains an uphill fight for Democrats, few could have imagined a year ago that we would be discussing just how fragile is Republicans’ hold on Texas.

Republicans’ newest midterm headache highlights the toxic political environment and self-destructive revenge mentality Trump has visited on his party. Losing the Texas Senate seat, and with it the Senate majority, would be karmic payback for a party that has never managed to stand up to him.

For his entire adult life, Trump has dissembled, exaggerated, and outright lied about everything from his wealth to his poll numbers to the economy to Covid to the 2020 election. Whether it is small, stupid lies (e.g., awards he never won) or cringeworthy stories about invented encounters (the infamous stories that begin: “With tears in his eyes, he came up to me. ‘Sir …’”), or jaw-dropping reversals of reality (blaming not Russia but Ukraine for the war), the pathological narcissist-in-chief creates his own reality, daring followers to question him and sneering at “fake news” that reveals his lies.

Sadly, he has largely succeeded with bluster and fabrication inside the cult of personality where loyalty is measured by eagerness to adopt the most idiotic falsehoods, only sycophants (and dullards) get hired, and the right-wing media runs interference for him 24/7.

But the lies and distortions and excuses only work up to a point. When reality becomes dire enough, Trump can no longer convince even his supporters to disbelieve their lying eyes. And that has been happening a lot lately.

Trump’s approval numbers overall, even among Republicans, are sinking. Reuters reported last week: “Donald Trump’s presidential approval rating fell to nearly its lowest level ​since he returned to the White House, hit by a drop in support among Republicans, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.” His overall approval plummeted to 35 percent, but most noteworthy is the reality that “Discontent is spreading within Trump’s party, with 21% of Republicans saying they now disapprove of the president’s performance, compared to 5% just after he took office ​in January 2025.” In addition, “Some 79% of Republicans in the poll said Trump was doing a good job, down from 82% earlier in the month and 91% at the ​start of his term.” In short, more Republicans refuse to buy his fabrications. They know prices are high; they know they cannot make ends meet. Most know the war is a disaster.

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Trump’s inability to bamboozle the public or foreign actors is most evident with regard to his Iran fiasco. Whatever video bombing footage he shows and whatever hyperbole he spouts, the public overwhelmingly believes it’s been a debacle. When he declares victory but previews a deal that signals capitulation, Republicans now raise a ruckus. (He responds by insulting them or introducing a non sequitur — e.g., Arab states’ adoption of the Abraham Accords.)

Trump has been even less successful in snowing the Iranians, who have learned his deadlines are phony, his threats are empty, and his premature declarations of a deal signal panic. Iran is not about to give him a deal to mask his strategic failure; they figured out months ago that the emperor has no clothes.

As the New York Times put it, “[T]he contours of a deal emerging this week to end the war reflected how Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign does not appear to have decisively shifted Iran’s stance on its nuclear program.” Frankly, Trump has not moved the Iranians one iota. As with the staged Gaza deal, Trump apparently is kicking down the road the critical demands (e.g. suspending enrichment) that may have to wait for subsequent negotiations (which could last forever). No wonder Republicans are melting down: The U.S.’s strategic defeat is too obvious to conceal.

Trump’s powers of prevarication don’t work these days with most Senate Republicans. He simply cannot convince them that a slush fund to pay off insurrectionists passes the smell test. Suddenly, Republicans who have been playing along with election denial are outraged: We can’t reward people who attacked police officers!

Most humiliating, Trump cannot convince voters he is the healthiest president ever. Too many trips to Walter Reed, too many episodes of falling asleep in public, too many pictures of discolored hands, and too many boasts about “acing” a cognitive exam have taken their toll. People don’t buy that the lumbering, speech-slurring, sleepy president is in tip-top shape.

Only 40 percent of Americans in a recent ABC-Washington Post poll think he has the “mental sharpness to serve as president, down from 47 percent last September,” the Washington Post reported. Only 44 percent (down 10 points) think he’s physically up for the job. Likewise, a YouGov poll from April found that “35% say Trump is suffering significant cognitive decline, while 13% say he’s suffering modest cognitive decline.”

Frankly, Trump’s proficiency at reshaping reality has been declining for some time. He has been spectacularly unsuccessful, even among Republicans, in convincing people there is nothing to see in the Epstein files. He had to put the kibosh on the phrase “mass deportation” and keep ICE out the headlines because Americans, by gosh, just wouldn’t buy that Renee Good and Alex Pretti were domestic terrorists and that grandmothers, toddlers, and manual labors are the “worst of the worst” who must be deported.

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What happened to the master con man? For one thing, as the former reality show star should know, people get bored. The same old Trump shtick gets tiresome; the public’s patience with his excuses wears thin. They have heard all the lies, all the Biden blame-shifting, all the “two weeks away” deadline-shifting. It’s stale.

In addition, Trump’s lack of impulse control has deprived him of any semblance of credibility or normality. Vulgar outbursts (e.g., insulting murdered Rob Reiner, threatening genocide) and loony visuals (portraying the Obamas as apes and himself as Jesus) confirm something is very wrong with him. It does not help him that the legacy media outlets have become more candid about his questionable sanity.

Finally, people may go along with Trump’s bluster and BS when things are going well; but once they cannot pay the grocery bills, average Americans tend to become indignant about politicians lying to their faces. And once they start losing elections, elected Republicans feel less compelled to indulge Trump’s lies.

Trump certainly still has a grip on hardcore cult members. Primary voters will dutifully follow his lead (as they did in trouncing Cornyn) to feed Trump’s ego and exact revenge on his enemies. However, his power to convince the public at large, including Republicans more generally, that prices are low, victory in Iran was complete, his mind has never been sharper, etc., is evaporating. As he grows more frustrated, his angry outbursts will likely multiply, his search for scapegoats will accelerate, and his willingness to burn down every institution and norm to deny his enemies victory will intensify.

None of these antics will soothe the gapping neediness at the core of his being, but as his panic sets in, he will make America more chaotic, violent, and corrupt.

First, the prosecution persecution of deported-then-retrieved-then-indicted Kilmar Abrego Garcia blew up in Blanche’s face. A federal court judge not only dismissed the case but hammered home key adverse evidence that Blanche supplied warranting Abrego Garcia’s release.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr., of the Middle District of Tennessee ruled on a record replete with damning facts that the government’s decision to reopen a closed case against Abrego Garcia for transporting undocumented immigrants stemming from a November 2022 traffic stop was an illegitimate, vindictive prosecution. In stinging language, Crenshaw invoked the revered Attorney General Robert H. Jackson’s famous warning that the worst abuse of power comes when a prosecutor “will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted.”

Crenshaw cited repeatedly the key piece of evidence: Blanche’s “unrebutted public statements tying the reopened investigation” to Abrego Garcia’s successful suit challenging his deportation to CECOT. Crenshaw wrote that the inference of vindictiveness was supported by the “reopening of the investigation, Blanche’s unrebutted statements, and [Blanche aide and associate deputy attorney general Aakash] Singh’s sustained oversight.” Judge Crenshaw emphasized, “Blanche’s statements tie Main Justice to the tainted investigation and confirm what motivated it.”

Judge Crenshaw found the Justice Department could “not explain the Government’s change in position to remove Abrego Garcia and not prosecute him to then prosecute and not remove him.” Crenshaw recounted:

[Blanche’s] public statements stand unrebutted. Blanche stated that the Executive Branch began “investigating” Abrego after a judge in Maryland “questioned” the Executive Branch’s decision to deport him. The Court previously found that Blanche’s “remarkable statements could directly establish that the motivations for Abrego’s criminal charges stem from his exercise of his constitutional and statutory rights,” and that Blanche “directly tie[d] [Homeland Security’s] investigation to Abrego’s Maryland suit.”

Blanche’s words directly confirm that the Executive Branch reopened the criminal investigation because the Judicial Branch required the Executive Branch to facilitate Abrego’s return from El Salvador.

Ouch. It’s one thing to lose a case critical to Trump. (Abrego Garcia infuriated the regime when he challenged Trump and Stephen Miller’s evil deportation scheme — and won!) It is quite another to lose it because you gave the defense critical evidence of vindictive motive. “Instead of investigating the November 2022 traffic stop to identify who was responsible for the human smuggling, Blanche started the investigation to implicate Abrego,” Judge Crenshaw wrote. “He did so to justify the Executive Branch’s decision to remove him to El Salvador.” Trump wanted a Roy Cohn attack dog, but in Blanche he has a loose-lipped bumbler.

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Trump’s primary use for DOJ these days is to harass his enemies under the guise of legitimate law enforcement. Blanche’s blunder makes him a poor choice for that task. Crenshaw’s order nailing Blanche for vindictive prosecution puts other judges on notice; in these concocted revenge cases, judges will be that much more skeptical and less inclined to extend the “presumption of regularity” to Blanche and his attorneys. Blanche sure does not seem the ideal attorney general to pursue Trump’s revenge cases.

If the Abrego Garcia case was a blunder for Blanche (in large part because it confirmed critics’ accusations against Trump’s vicious deportation scheme and lies about Abrego Garcia), then the anti-weaponization fund might turn out to be Blanche’s career ender with Trump. Blanche, in testimony before Congress and then in a heated, disastrous row with two dozen Republican senators, did nothing but infuriate lawmakers over Blanche’s demand that they approve Trump’s “payout pot for punks,” as Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) so colorfully put it. After two hours with Blanche, Republican Senators voiced their fury, taking turns bashing Blanche. The irate senators were unusually candid:

• Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) sneered: “So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong — take your pick.”

• Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson called the scheme a “galactic blunder.”

• Tillis appeared disgusted: “Under what circumstances would it ever make sense to provide restitution for people who were either pled guilty or were found guilty in a court of law? You want to talk about maybe providing restitution for people who weren’t found guilty? Fine, but if you do this, why not for the poor, mostly peaceful prospect protesters in Kenosha; in Portland?”

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Blanche not only failed to calm the storm; he wound up provoking usually docile senators and maring his own standing with the people who would have to confirm him if he were nominated for the job. (As a result of the blow-up, the Republicans had to flee D.C. and forgo a vote on the reconciliation bill.)

Even if Trump sticks with Blanche as his nominee, the rate at which Blanche is alienating Republican senators (and at which Trump is creating new defectors in the Republican Senate ranks) suggests Blanche might not make it through a confirmation fight.

Let’s hope that a lawyer who is this undisciplined, untrustworthy, and unethical does not get the AG job. If his prat-falls knock him out of consideration, we would be spared ever having to hear the phrase “Attorney General Blanche” — a phrase that a democracy struggling to hang on to the rule of law could certainly do without.