hillary clinton

Republicans continue to rip President Donald Trump's latest Iran deal to shreds, according to a new report from The Hill, with at least one lawmaker saying that "Ronald Reagan is rolling over in his grave" in reaction to it.

This week, details began to emerge about the latest peace deal signed by officials in the U.S. and Iran, aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz and issuing a 60-day ceasefire to allow for further negotiations to take place. Elsewhere, the deal will also, among other things, end the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports and create a $300 billion fund to help the nation rebuild.

While the deal also calls for Iran to swear off ever developing a nuclear weapon, it does not call for an end to its nuclear program altogether. This, and the economic benefits given to Iran, have prompted considerable backlash against the deal from Republicans in Washington, with some, like Sen. Bill Cassidy, tearing the bill apart in no uncertain terms and saying that the terms are not worth what the U.S. had to sacrifice to get here.

“Ronald Reagan is rolling over in his grave,” Cassidy wrote in a social media post, calling the Iran war and this ensuing deal. the “worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”

He continued: “Iran’s nuclear ambitions were not curbed, and they have learned that threatening the Strait of Hormuz works and will undoubtedly leverage it in the future. Now, Iran gets to build brand-new infrastructure under this deal. Now, 13 Americans are dead, families have paid billions at the pump, sanctions will be lifted, and the bombing has stopped."

Sen. Thom Tillis, an outspoken Trump critic within the GOP, also made a similar point about the losses incurred during the war.

"You got to do the balance of accounts: A hundred billion roughly, maybe more, spent today, 13 dead, 365 wounded, injured, our partners in the Middle East bombed, they’ve had casualties," Tillis laid out. "There’s got to be a lot of return on that... We set out by saying we were going to drive down to zero their nuclear capability. Now we’re equivocating on that... There’s a lot of work to be done to convince me that we’re on the right path."

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, typically known to be a loyal MAGA follower, also spoke out against the deal for giving money to "theocratic lunatics," but stopped short of directly blaming Trump for the bad terms.

"History teaches that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is not a good idea," Cruz said. "I think the president is receiving some very poor advice on this deal."

Psychologist Mary Trump often argues that her uncle, President Donald Trump — for all his bluster — is deeply insecure and needs constant validation. New York Times opinion writers Bret Stephens and Frank Bruni examine those "titanic insecurities" in a Q&A-style discussion, arguing that Trump's troubled state of mind is the source of the many bad decisions he is making.

Bruni lamented, "Trump doesn't have ideas. He has only his instincts, — base ones — and his insecurities, which are titanic." And the conservative Stephens interjected, "Except his titanic insecurities never seem to sink him, only the rest of us."

Stephens told Bruni, "Trump never pays the price he should. He makes sure of that. He's so shameless and emphatic — no, operatic — in his insistence that total failure is nonpareil triumph that most of his supporters question and then dismiss any serious stirrings of disappointment they feel. Gullibility is so much easier than skepticism, and it keeps you tucked comfily in your tribe. Trump also benefits from our thoroughly polluted information ecosystem: His loyalists dwell in a kingdom of propaganda to which you, me and this exchange of ours aren't granted access."

Trump, Stephens and Bruni warned, is pushing a range of terrible policies, from tariffs to alienating longtime U.S. allies. And they believe that his troubled state of mind is playing a prominent role in his decisions.

Both of them are highly critical of Trump's ceasefire agreement with Iran, which Bruni described as "less a deal than a debacle."

Stephens told Bruni, "I supported the war from the outset and thought the cause was necessary and just. But facts are stubborn things, as John Adams said. And the central fact of our time is that we are led — I am using that verb in the loosest sense — by a man whose idea of courage is bullying, whose idea of honor is knavery, whose idea of loyalty is convenience, whose idea of patriotism is self-idolization, and whose idea of principle is anything that suits his need and his pleasure. Now excuse me while I throw up…. If this deal is as bad as I fear it is — marking an ignominious defeat in the Middle East — will it hurt Trump politically the way that Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan hurt him? Or might Americans shrug and move on, especially if the price of oil continues to fall and the markets continue to rise?"

The conservative New York Times columnist added, "In other words, will Trump pay no political price for his foreign policy fecklessness?"

Donald Trump claimed an Iran deal was coming—for literally the 40th time—on the weekend of his 80th birthday as he turned the White House lawn into a circus of rage and vulgarity all backed with ads for crypto companies and Trump coins.

He hoped the UFC fights would overshadow how bad the so-called deal was, as he was heading to Europe to claim a victory over Iran while not having an actual copy of anything with details of it. He would just tell the G7 leaders at the summit how great it is—as if they’re going to believe him after all he’s put them through from tariffs to Greenland—while the written details conveniently wouldn’t be ready until the end of the week.

But those details of the “memorandum of understanding” (hardly a deal) have been coming out, and it’s pretty simple: Trump settled for getting the Strait of Hormuz possibly opened in return for Iran getting 300 billion dollars. On my SiriusXM program, retired U.S. Army General Randy Manner told me this was an “unconditional surrender” and will go down in history as a terrible military defeat.

Trump tried to kick the details down the road, hoping against all hope that people will forget. There’s nothing concrete being stated about the nuclear material being secured and Trump is already preparing for that, actually pondering at the G7 summit, “Why even bother” to get it? His reasoning is that his bombing of the nuclear facility last year has so buried the material that it’s not usable.

Then why did we need to go to war and cost lives?

Trump says the strait will be “permanently toll-free,” but Iran says it will have “fees.”

There is a technical, legal difference, which Trump is trying to hide behind, but there’s no tangible difference between the two. Iran’s foreign ministry said that Iran was “not seeking to levy transit tolls; however, fees will be charged in exchange for the services that are provided.”

In other words, Trump is getting snookered.

Trump and JD Vance have also been adamant that the $300 billion to rebuild Iran is not coming from U.S. dollars but from a fund set up by the Gulf states—the very nations Iran attacked throughout the war.

But, as retired general Jack Keane said on Fox, “The $300 billion is real. Who cares where it comes from? The Iranians are still in charge. They’re going to take that money and recover everything.”

Keane compared it to allowing Nazi Germany access to billions for reconstruction while the Nazis were still in charge, no matter who’s giving them the money.

And with the Gulf states themselves looking for bailouts from the US for the damage they incurred—and the Trump administration indicated back in April that it was open to it—it’s not clear to me that US dollars are not going to Iran.

It’s also been reported, however, that the money won’t come from governments of the Gulf states but from “investors,” and not just from the Gulf.

Reuters reports:

“The new fund is a private investment vehicle, not a reconstruction or reparations program and will not include any ⁠government money or grants, the source said, adding that companies based in the U.S., the Gulf Arab states, Asia, South America and Africa have agreed to commit financing.” Investments pledged span energy, logistics, manufacturing and transport, the source said.

So this looks like another way for global corporations and real estate development companies—including those owned by the Trump family and their buddies—to make a lot of money. You better believe Trump is getting the oil companies all revved up, as he tried to do with Venezuela.

Plus, the U.S. will be unfreezing $24 billion in Iranian assets. This is the same crowd that criticized President Obama for unfreezing far less and getting far more in the Iran deal he negotiated. At least it was clear under Obama’s deal there would be—and were—inspections. But that’s not clear in anything Trump has said. And if he doesn’t get a way, way better deal than Obama did, why were the lives of American soldiers and thousands of civilians in Iran and throughout the region sacrificed?

Let’s not forget that this began as “regime change,” in which Trump spent weeks telling the protesters in Iran he was going to save them—then told them to come out and take power after the bombing began. When that delusional plan—cooked up by Benjamin Netenyahu and sold to a gullible Trump even as people in the White House thought it was not going to happen—fell apart, Trump claimed the war was about getting the nuclear material.

But now he’s saying that’s a goal down the road, if even that, because “Why bother?”

Iran is declaring full victory. And though it has suffered terrible losses of its military infrastructure and leadership, it has won in terms of the geopolitics of this war, simply by surviving and now having a huge weapon. It controls the strait and can get ransom for it. Iran is blaring on state media that it is victorious. Acknowledging Iran’s loses, the Financial Times puts it in context:

Within the highest ranks of the Islamic republic, nobody would deny Iran is nursing devastating losses. US and Israeli strikes destroyed crucial infrastructure, took the lives of about 3,500 civilians, and killed supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several senior military commanders.
But regime insiders, Iranian analysts and western diplomats in Tehran agree on one thing: the war failed to bring the radical transformation sought by Iran’s enemies. In fact, the regime, which at the start of the year appeared to be at its most vulnerable, seems more confident than before the war began in February.
“The US made a big mistake. It awakened the sleeping dragon,” said a regime insider. “We paid a huge price, but we activated capacities that we had previously hesitated to use.”

The extremist religious leaders in Tehran are feeling omnipotent, and they will repress the Iranian people even further. Prominent Republicans are already speaking out, and more will follow once the details are public.

Marc Thiessen, the odious former George W. Bush aide who reportedly advised Trump, warned on Fox News that this deal was “no better” than Obama’s.

After Vance confirmed the $300 billion payout, Thiessen called the deal a “disaster.”

The far-right Wall Street Journal editorial page states, “There’s no denying that Mr. Trump is retreating from his main goals as political pressure has built at home, and finishing the job requires greater military risk.”

“The deal also includes no Iranian commitments on its missiles and terror proxies,” the WSJ stated. “These will be put off to ‘regional discussions’ from which no one expects much.”

In other words, Trump caused thousands of deaths, including those of American service members; cost U.S. taxpayers billions; depleted munitions; and sent gas prices soaring, which in turn had inflation on all other goods surging. And in the end he completely caved to the Iranian regime.

To remind you, here’s what Trump said on “Meet the Press” that aired on June 7:

“The [2020] election was rigged. It was a dirty election … And it’s happening again right now in California…. they’re cheating on the election. … they’re crooked…. You know that these elections are rigged. … Your elections in this country … are like a third world country. Your elections are crooked.”

When Trump lies with this kind of vehemence, does he sincerely believe what he’s saying — in which case he’s seriously demented?

OR does he know full well it’s a lie, and part of his strategy for the 2026 midterm elections is to undermine public trust in our electoral system, especially in predominantly Democratic states and cities — in which case he’s traitorous?

I think it’s both — he’s a traitor to America and he’s seriously demented — both a knave and a fool.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel know full well that the incidence of voter fraud in America is near zero. They’re playing along with Trump because, well, they’re just traitors.

***

Blanche’s Justice Department is now ramping up its investigations of supposed voter fraud across the country.

Blanche has instructed federal prosecutors to prioritize alleged voter fraud cases.

Over the last year, the Justice Department has sought voter roll data from most states; sued those that have declined to comply; opened a criminal investigation into 2020 election results in Fulton County, Georgia (Trump narrowly lost Georgia that year); subpoenaed records tied to the Arizona Senate’s review of Maricopa County voting; and demanded ballots from the 2024 race from Wayne County, Michigan.

A March 2026 order directed the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to compile state-by-state citizenship lists before federal elections; instructed the Department of Justice to prioritize investigations and prosecutions of officials and private actors involved in issuing or distributing ballots to ineligible voters; and ordered new Postal Service rules for tracking mail and absentee ballots.

Yet despite the Trump regime’s demands for voter roll data, at least eight federal district judges have rejected those demands. Half of those judges were appointed by Trump. The regime is appealing the decisions.

I used to work at the Justice Department, and, to the best of my knowledge, it has never had a 0-for-8 losing streak.

And let me remind you once again: There’s close to zero evidence of any voter fraud in America.

**

California appears to be an early testing ground for Trump’s voting fraud witch hunt.

Speaking to conservative radio host Glenn Beck recently, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, Bill Essayli, promised “[w]e will be charging some people.” The promise would have been a violation of Justice Department policy under past procedures that barred the department from involving itself in state or local elections, but Essayli has no qualms. “It will be election fraud charges in the next … one or two months, I believe. We need some of these results to be certified so we can prove some of the allegations.”

Essayli dispatched prosecutors to offices where ballots were being counted and has appealed for anyone with evidence of voter fraud to come forward, saying that “what we need right now are witnesses.”

Hello? The way justice is supposed to be served in America begins with investigations followed by allegations and then proof.

On social media, Essayli charges that California “has stonewalled every effort to verify that only eligible U.S. citizens are registered to vote.” He warns that his office will “not look the other way. We will investigate and prosecute,” adding that “every legal vote deserves to be counted. Every illegal vote cancels one out.”

Since taking over as the top prosecutor in Los Angeles, Essayli — a former Republican state assemblyman — has proven that his loyalty to Trump exceeds his fealty to the law. He has dropped cases against the president’s allies; aggressively pursued charges against protesters rallying against the administration’s immigration crackdown, only to face a string of losses; and investigated California over its policies toward transgender athletes.

**

Kash Patel’s FBI is participating in this dangerous charade.

Last Thursday, the FBI executed a search warrant at the office of an Ohio-based community grassroots group — the Ohio Organizing Collaborative — that works to register voters. Over 125 federal agents reportedly showed up at the homes of its employees and volunteers to interview them. The agents knocked on doors and demanded to come into their houses to get phones, without warrants. They followed people in their cars, even followed kids to school.

Last fall, Frank LaRose, a Republican serving as Ohio’s top election official, referred 1,084 noncitizens who appeared to have registered in the state to the Justice Department. Federal investigators have also collected voter records in at least six Ohio counties, Reuters reported in April.

Why Ohio? It’s one of the few states where a Democrat — in this case, Sherrod Brown — has a chance to flip a formerly Republican seat in the U.S. Senate.

The FBI is also probing Wisconsin. It recently attempted to interview the director of elections in Milwaukee County. Earlier this year, Minnesota’s secretary of state received grand jury subpoenas seeking some voter records as part of a federal investigation into whether noncitizens are registered to vote or have unlawfully cast ballots.

**

Trump, his suck-ups Blanche and Patel, and their army of prosecutorial lackeys such as California’s Essayli and Minnesota’s LaRose are not out to win cases against voter fraud.

Their real purpose is to create so much doubt in the minds of the American public about whether voter fraud has occurred that it becomes easier for Trump to claim — after Democrats have prevailed in the 2026 midterm elections — that they did so because they cheated. And then for Trump, Blanche, and Patel to contest those wins.

According to this scenario, Trump would declare that the election results were rigged, as he has in the past. He would assert that the results in specific jurisdictions—counties, cities, or states— should not be recognized. He would allege fraud and irregularities, illegal ballots, or foreign interference, including cyber activity.

In response, compliant federal authorities would require investigation of those results before they were finalized. The authorities would move to secure ballots, voting records, or related materials in contested jurisdictions, building on the actions the Trump regime has already taken.

While these investigations are taking place, Trump would then call on congressional leadership to proceed as if the announced results are invalid, urging the Speaker of the House to organize the chamber on the basis of a Republican majority, and encouraging similar action in the Senate, urging them to ignore any jurisdictions in which the federal government was still undertaking its review.

It’s the only real strategy Trump has left — given that his war in Iran has failed, the prices of gas and food are likely to remain elevated through the midterm elections, and most working Americans are struggling far harder than they did before Trump occupied the Oval Office.

But it’s a dangerous, cynical strategy that will further undermine public trust in our system of government.

**

What can stop them?

Governors and mayors need to get in front of this and warn voters about this treachery.

They should give voters the facts about the infinitesimal incidence of voter fraud in their states and cities, show the resources they’re using to stop voter fraud, and explain any anomalies (such as the length of time it took in California to determine the outcome of the primary elections).

Governors also should communicate clearly and early to their constituents that election results will be honored, that certification will proceed under state law, and that the rights of voters will be protected regardless of federal claims to the contrary. That kind of clarity can shape public expectations before a crisis, not after it.

Governors should decide now that they will certify results under state law and will not alter or withhold certification in response to federal claims. They can secure custody of ballots and direct state law enforcement to protect election materials. They should prepare for the possibility that federal agents will attempt to seize ballots or voting infrastructure and define in advance how state authorities will respond.

Secretaries of state should secure chain-of-custody procedures as well as physical and digital records, and prepare detailed audit documentation for immediate release. They should prepare public reporting systems that make results, audits, and underlying data rapidly accessible. Speed matters. Claims of fraud and irregularities take hold quickly; rebuttal must be quick.

State attorneys general should draft complaints now, identify jurisdictions for filing, and coordinate multi-state litigation strategies. They should prepare to challenge ballot seizures, interference with certification, emergency detentions, and federal control of election processes. They should also coordinate with local prosecutors and law enforcement to define how state criminal law applies to interference with election administration.

All this still may not be enough. Trump is a master conman. But he’s also off his rocker — and part of the response to him and his bonkers claims must also be to emphasize that he’s out of his mind as well as responsible for the havoc America now finds itself in — the failed foreign adventures and the affordability crisis — and therefore must not be trusted.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

A prominent conservative commentator expressed outrage at his fellow Republicans, who he described as “monkeys,” for helping to create President Donald Trump.

“A few Republican senators have been making a little noise about the Trump administration’s supposed deal — the agreement to seek an agreement — with Iran,” wrote Kevin D. Williamson in The Dispatch. “Apparently, there are some in Congress who believe that Congress should have some input here. That’s cute.”

Williamson explained that Trump declared the Iran war illegally by not receiving congressional approval first, then added that House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune were “servile” toward the president instead of asserting their institutional prerogatives.

“I have asked for days, why can’t we, the people, see the damn MOU?” Williamson quoted talk show host Mark Levin saying about Trump. “Not through people briefed by an anonymous person. Honestly, I’ve never seen anything like this. If it is a great outcome for peace, then release it.”

He added, “There is an answer to that question, and it is that Trump does not care what Mark Levin has to say about this or about anything else. I used to have a friendly relationship with Mark Levin, who used to have me on his show from time to time and blurbed one of my books—and one cannot help but admire a man who has made a career in radio with that Gilbert Gottfried-meets-Wallace Shawn voice—but he is, like everybody else in the Fox News orbit, a cheap date where Trump is concerned.”

Despite Levin supporting Trump’s attempted coup in 2020-2021, Williamson said that Trump has treated the loyalist like a “cheap date.” The same thing is true for Thune, Williamson argued, who “whimpered that there should be ‘probably some expectation’ that the Senate would get a vote on this. Probably some expectation—forceful stuff, if you happen to be an amoeba.”

He also criticized Republican lawmakers like Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford (“the Republican senator from Oklahoma believes that Congress’ job is simply to ‘solidify’ that which passes out of the executive branch, as if the Senate were a dose of legislative Imodium”) and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (“that mighty Hyperion of South Carolina, thundered: ‘I am somewhat concerned.’”)

Williamson concluded that Trump is not to blame for Levin, Thune, Johnson, Graham, Lankford and others behaving in an abject manner. He instead blames them.

“That is the ironic outcome of setting aside one’s principles—and morality and patriotism—to pursue power vicariously through a corrupt demagogue such as Trump: You lose your reputation but don’t get the power you thought you were going to get—you abandon your honor for nothing, or almost nothing: maybe a little bit of money for the broadcasters and a little more time on the public teat for the time-servers,” Williamson said.

He added, “Proximity to power creates an illusion of sharing in that power, of being part of some great grand thing: I have seen men I thought were serious receive a mere text message from the White House and squeal like a 4-year-old girl who has been presented with a real live unicorn on her birthday. It is unseemly.” In contrast to the ancient Roman senator Cato the Younger, who committed suicide rather than live under the ascending tyranny of the new emperor Julius Caesar, “Republicans are pretending to be surprised and put out by all this.”

Intelligencer columnist Ed Kilgore says Republicans derived a benefit from chaining themselves to President Donald Trump over the last decade, but they are definitely not the party to envy anymore. If anything, they're living "a total nightmare."

“[The year] 2026 has been even worse for [Sen.] John Thune (R-S.D.) and his GOP colleagues,” wrote Kilgore. “Senate Republicans began the year absolutely secure in their majority, thanks to a very favorable landscape and insane amounts of money. Now that majority is in real peril. The congressional GOP is totally dependent on Trump, and he seems to be the one Republican in Washington who doesn’t understand that the party can’t win the midterms unless it addresses Americans’ cost-of-living concerns.”

Kilgore added that Thune has been insisting that the Senate abandon its bipartisan traditions such as the filibuster, automatically approving judicial appointments from each senator’s state and working with a nonpartisan professional parliamentarian. He quoted Trump’s Wednesday Truth Social post to illustrate his point.

The other striking thing about the Truth Social post, Kilgore said, is that Trump "seems to be returning to the sort of plague-on-both-your-houses 'outsider' rhetoric he deployed regularly during his first presidential run in 2016."

"He says Republicans are complicit with 'Dumocrats' in blocking the excellent Pulte; have 'ridiculous' views on the blue-slip tradition; and 'fell into a trap' by refusing to blow up every single precedent in order to enact the SAVE America Act.

Trump's plan appears to be "keep publicly attacking his party for disloyalty and incompetence while demanding that they win the midterms," he added, which spealls trouble for most any party fighting to retain its slim majority. But of course, Kilgore added that "Thune must know that even if Republicans somehow maintain control of the Senate, Trump may depose him as majority leader anyway in favor of a new punching bag."

Veteran reporter and author Michael Wolff, who has covered Trump’s life and political career in depth, recently explained in his Daily Beast podcast “Inside Trump’s Head” that the president’s fellow Republicans are nervous that the poor quality of his appointees will impair their own credibility.

"I think it is that Trump’s low-rent lackeys and incompetents now are challenging every Republican senator’s credibility," Wolff explained to co-host Joanna Coles. He later said that “when this administration began, the new president gets the benefit of the doubt," adding that this is especially damning for lawmakers who supported Trump’s questionable appointees in order to show partisan solidarity.

“Almost each and every one of the senior Trump appointments — how do we characterize them? As lackeys and incompetents,” Wolff argued. “Almost everybody in the Senate, especially Republican senators, has had to reevaluate the votes that they’ve cast for these people and has had to reluctantly take responsibility for putting these lackeys, incompetents, and completely unfit people in the job. That is a pattern. That’s there. And this has become a separate political issue for Trump.

Law and Crime reports Pulitzer Prize board members are demanding a Florida judge either force President Donald Trump to respond to their discovery demands or to shut down his Russia probe lawsuit until after his second term ends.

In 2022, the ever-litigious Trump sued 19 individual members of the Pulitzer Prize Board for defamation and conspiracy because the board refused to rescind the 2018 joint awards it gave to The New York Times and The Washington Post for their coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

In 2024, Trump crowed premature victory when the judge overseeing the case denied the board’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit — but that dismissal was not a win. Pegg’s ruling did not even suggest the Pulitzer Board’s review of its award was flawed.

Two years later, the president appears to have frozen up, having refused to produce “a single written response or document” related to discovery requested by the defendants.

The Board argues that it’s gone out of its way to produce every scrap of information demanded by Trump’s lawyers, but Trump’s people have stalled in handing much of anything.

“Despite these extraordinary extensions for his discovery responses, Plaintiff has yet to produce a single written response or document. Defendants, on the other hand, have engaged in robust discovery,” the Board said. “Over the last year, Defendants have reviewed more than 71,000 records and produced more than 124,000 pages of documents. In addition, six Defendants have sat for merits depositions, two more will be deposed in the next three weeks, and additional Defendants will soon be scheduled to sit for depositions by the end of September.”

Additionally, the Board argues Trump’s lawyers have “deposed two non-party witnesses who authored independent reviews of the 2018 National Reporting Prize and propounded a second set of discovery requests on Defendant David Remnick, to which Remick has already responded.”

Trump’s people, meanwhile, have submitted countless requests for extension while they gather their information.

“In his motion, Plaintiff asserts that he needs yet more time to respond to Defendants’ discovery responses — in total now seeking nearly ten months to respond to the First RFPs and Brown Interrogatories — for the same reason he gave in seeking the last extension,” said the Board. “The needs of the Presidency are purportedly too great to balance with his role as a Plaintiff in his case.”

If Trump is happy to hide behind the White House to avoid putting up his legal fists, the board says he should just keep hiding until the White House is finished with him. And gather his lawyers later.

“If he cannot live up to those responsibilities while also faithfully executing the Office of President of the United States, then the case must be stayed until Plaintiff's term in office has concluded," the defendants said.

Strangely, Trump himself had insisted on moving forward with the case while in office, and argued that point all the way up to Florida's Supreme Court in summer 2025, according to Law and Crime.

President Donald Trump is gradually eroding Republican support in a crucial swing state — indeed, the so-called “Keystone State” itself.

“Michael Pace likes his Republican congressman, yet he is almost certain to vote for his Democratic challenger,” reported CNN’s John King as he surveyed Pennsylvanians in advance of the 2026 midterm elections. He quoted Pace saying that “Trump is the problem that I see. The president is not doing what I think a president should be doing, and that's disturbing to me.” For that reason, Pace argued, he will oppose even a Republican politician he normally likes because he does not want that person to support Trump.

King also reviewed rising gas prices, frustration at the Iran war and the persistent problem of widespread inflation to explain why many Pennsylvanians are turning on Trump.

Discussing Pennsylvania’s wealthiest congressional district (that is, the first district), located in the southeastern portion of the state, King said that “this will be the toughest of the three districts we visited for the Democrats to win from there to the north and the seventh congressional district. Democrats believe: look at the margin last time. They should have a good chance here.”

He then moved on to the eighth district.

“Do the Democrats need to win all three. No," King. "But two of those three, at least, would tell you the Democrats are off to a good start as they try to retake the House. And we'll know that pretty early on on election night, because Pennsylvania is in the east. The polls close early. So can they get two? Can they get three? Are the Democrats having a tougher night than anticipated? We'll know that pretty early on come election night.”

Pennsylvania is so crucial to Republican chances in the upcoming midterms, a dark money right-wing group invested in ads to hurt the candidacy of firefighter Bob Brooks, who was perceived by many as the strongest potential nominee to flip the 7th district currently represented by Republican Ryan Mackenzie.

“By now, you may have seen television ads running paid for by a PAC called Lead Left,” Lamont McClure, one of the Democrats running in that district, told AlterNet in May about the ads. “I want to be clear. I'm running my own campaign and I've never heard of Lead Left before today. Our political system is broken and we have to put an end to all of the dark money being spent on our campaigns. I hope all of the candidates will join me in calling for the immediate cessation of dark money SuperPAC spending on all of our campaigns.”

He continued, “Throughout this campaign at every forum and debate we've had, I have called for a Constitutional Amendment to overturn the Supreme Court's disastrous decision in Citizens United. I renew that commitment today.”

Brooks himself said that the ad was created to sabotage his campaign because the GOP is intimidated by him.

“Republicans are targeting me because I’m the candidate they fear the most,” Brooks explained at the time. “They don’t want to face me in November because they know this firefighter will smoke Ryan Mackenzie, flip this seat, and stop Donald Trump’s cruel agenda.”

Mackenzie, on the other hand, leaned into the ad, with a representative telling AlterNet at the time “all the Democratic candidates are carbon copies when it comes to their radical left policies, but as soon as the DCCC decided to support scandal-plagued Bob Brooks, the dark money started flying around."

- YouTube www.youtube.com

After single-handedly launching a war against Iran and ballooning U.S. inflation a desperate President Donald Trump has flailed his way into a hasty Iran War agreement that is infuriating his once beholden team of right-wing allies and news media.

MS NOW host Melissa Murray had more than enough video outrage to vent on Wednesday evening, pointing out that “top MAGA and Fox News figures are not being shy about weighing in.”

“They're better off than they were before the hostilities began,” one former GOP lawmaker railed on Fox News.

“I hate to say this in this deal. The biggest loser is the United States and India,” said “Bolling” host Eric Bolling.

“I will say that the early returns do not look wildly promising at this point,” lamented MAGA influencer Ben Shapiro. “… Let's be very clear. This is the vice president's deal. It does not have support.”

“America has given up all of its leverage in this situation,” wailed another Fox News panelist.

“The regime has not changed,” argued former GOP lawmaker and show host Trey Gowdy. “They're just richer! … I didn't believe it. I thought somebody was spoofing me. … How about the guys and gals that bled and died on our country's behalf? Where's their fun? I didn't see that in MOU.”

“I do have concerns about the memorandum of understanding,” confessed former Trump vice president Mike Pence to Fox.

“Unless you were home schooled by a day drinker. No one's confident that Iran’s going to do anything,” said U.S. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.)

Trump’s high-speed memorandum of understanding would bring his disastrous attack on Iran to a close, but it would also grant Iran $300 billion that would be distributed to that country through an investment fund, and end economic sanctions, and the unfreezing of Iranian assets. Plus, there will be waivers that allow Iran to sell oil on the global market.”

Many of these concessions did not even exist before Trump and Israel chose to attack.

This leads to headlines, that Murray characterized as “absolutely scathing.”

The conservative Drudge Report barked up a distillation of several rotten headlines, including “Iran declares total victory will control Hormuz,” as well as a Wall Street Journal headline declaring “America in retreat.”

The right-wing and heavily influential Financial Times wrote “Humiliation’: Donald trump battles claims his Iran deal is worse than Obama’s” — while the cover of Rupert Murdoch's own New York Post declared: “Lovebomb,” complete with an image of people burning an American flag.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Zeteo reporters Andrew Perez and Asawin Suebsaeng say President Donald Trump is now having to admit humiliating defeat in the war he single-handedly launched against Iran, so now he is bitterly back to focusing on ramping up attacks on fellow Americans.

"As [his] failed war in Iran allegedly nears its conclusion, as a humiliating and well-deserved defeat, our authoritarian president is pivoting back to his other unsuccessful war – his assault on Americans," writes Zeteo. “... Trump’s ICE operations are surging, and so are his garbage lawsuits against protesters … One Trump adviser even explicitly told us that it was ‘a good thing’ the president was seemingly trying to wind down his war in Iran, because ‘we need to focus on the terrorists here and the problems we have at home.’”

This, they say, includes American citizens who dare to protest the administration’s policies, with the administration “getting back to bringing ridiculous criminal cases against anti-Trump protesters.”

“The Trump Justice Department, which functions as an arm of the White House, unveiled a conspiracy case on Tuesday against members of ‘a Minneapolis-based direct-action group with antifa ties,’” reports Zeteo, quoting the DOJ. “The case is eerily reminiscent of the DOJ prosecution of the ‘Broadview Six,’ which included former Zeteo contributor Kat Abughazaleh, for allegedly blocking vehicles at an ICE facility outside Chicago.”

The DOJ was forced to dismiss all charges in that case once the judge reviewed grand jury transcripts and found evidence of allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.

As in the Broadview Six case, the DOJ fell back to rote allegations of “conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer” against some protestors. Abughazaleh posted of the lazy charges, complaining that “the process is the punishment.”

“Earlier this year, sources with direct knowledge of the matter tell us, officials in the Trump Justice Department and elsewhere in the federal apparatus were determined to bring sweeping criminal charges against peaceful protesters and activist leaders in Minnesota,” reports Zeteo. “So far, they’d brought some cases against … activists, but not to the degree that certain senior Trump officials, such as White House policy architect Stephen Miller, craved.”

Administration personnel examined everything from the way Minnesota activists and demonstrators were organizing on encrypted messaging apps, to their liberal use of whistles, despite such accusation being “a tough sell,” according to one administration official conceded to us.

“It’s hard making people afraid of people with whistles," they added.

Nevertheless, Zeteo reports the administration looking to crack down on blue cities across the nation, including New York.