The people with so-called Trump Derangement Syndrome are not who you may believe them to be, states Michael Tomasky, writing in The New Republic.

One look at recent polling provides a clue, the piece claims.

“Nate Silver found Trump’s approval slipping into uncharted territory, and approval of the war generally polls in the 30s—but at the same time, an NBC News poll discovered that among self-identified MAGAs, Trump’s approval stood literally at 100 percent to zero.”

So who earns TDS honors? “I’d say that we shouldn’t even accept the presumption that Trump Derangement Syndrome applies to people like us,” Tomasky writes. “It does not. The people who suffer from TDS in this country are the ones who support him.”

He adds, “Awareness is a far heavier burden than derangement.”

Case in point on that argument was Trump’s recent quip during his press availability with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. A Japanese reporter asked him why he didn’t inform U.S. allies before starting the Iran war. Trump’s response included this gem:“Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?”

Uproar predictably ensued in the U.S. and Japan, “a combination of outrage and resignation that the president of the United States is both an idiot and a moral eunuch, from whom such simultaneously tedious and offensive bilge is expected.”

Perhaps the worst part, Tomasky writes, “is that Trump likened the U.S. attack on Iran to the Japanese attack on Hawaii. Trump was saying it was a good thing that the United States emulated the actions of a fascist regime that had killed millions and raped infants in China. Still, the details of history mean nothing to Trump. History is only about great men, and whether they win or lose.”

That attitude is reflected in the current Iran quagmire. Trump was somehow convinced that he could beat Iran “by sheer dint of his will.”

“That’s precisely the kind of thing you come to believe when you’ve cheated your way through life,” Tomasky writes. “Am I overstating things? Do I suffer—gasp—from Trump Derangement Syndrome?”

Tomasky underlines his final point on that by citing an essay from Simon Lazarus, who warns liberals not to become obsessed with Trump, but to focus on his supporters.

“He’s right about that,” Tomasky concludes.

A senior administration figure leaking that the Trump administration will ask Congress for $200 million to continue its war with Iran shows that even the inner circle worries that things are out of control.

The leak raised eyebrows after The Washington Post first reported it, and now speculation is swirling that the tip from the White House inner circle was intended as a general wake-up call to Republicans in Congress: the Iran situation isn’t getting any better, even with that level of spending.

“All this makes it absolutely clear that Congress will not just be asked to fund Trump’s war, but also that the pressure on Congress to do something about this madness will intensify,” states The New Republic.

Congressman Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told host Greg Sargent on The New Republic podcast that the $200 billion request is just the start.

“This is $200 billion — on top of, by the way, the other thing that has been leaked, which is that the president wants to ask for $1.5 trillion in the regular defense budget, which is a 50 percent increase in the defense budget from what it was before,” Smith said.

“So that’s pushing up close to $2 trillion for defense in a nation that’s $40 trillion in debt — and they just cut taxes by $4 trillion.”

Smith noted how prior cuts to USAID play a role in extending the Iran war.

“And I always remember something that Bob Gates said to our committee, 15 or 20 years ago now, when he was secretary of defense: if you cut diplomacy, if you cut development, you better give me more ammunition, because we’re going to have more conflicts in the world. And that is the path that Trump is walking us down.”

Smith also flatly declares that no Democrats should agree to fund another dime for Trump’s war, and vows that if Democrats win the majority, his handling of it will face vigorous investigations.

A huge battle looms in Congress over the $200 billion request.

“It’s going to be very tough to get it through," said Smith. "I think all Democrats should oppose it. I mean, I’ll oppose it for no other reason than I oppose this war and I want this war to stop. But look — you want to know something really funny? You know what Congress tried to pass yesterday in the House? A balanced budget amendment. The Republican House put that out — I mean, I’m not often speechless, but I’m close to speechless trying to explain that. So there will be some Republicans who will say, gosh, we can’t do this, it’s too expensive and all of that. But you know the pattern — they say it, and then at the end of the day, they do whatever Trump asks them to. So how many Republicans will actually oppose it? I don’t know.”

The Congressman was appalled at the notion of spending on the war while neglecting other issues.

“The idea that we’re going to dig into the rest of the budget — we’re cutting Medicaid, food stamps, we’re cutting all of these programs — and then we’re going to pull $200 billion aside on top of a $1.5 trillion defense budget? Hell no. No Democrat should vote for this. And I hope the Republicans who care about fiscal responsibility will stand up and say no. But it’s a tough call. And then you get into the whole 60 votes in the Senate — did they get rid of the filibuster? I think it’s going to be really difficult to pull through this amount of money.”

President Donald Trump faces a post-presidential life of investigations, depositions and hearings. So writes Matt Ford in The New Republic, who claims that “the president has deeply underestimated his legal and political peril.”

Trump faces a future that he's seen before. His first term was followed by criminal prosecutions from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, indictments from special counsel Jack Smith, and challenges over the 2020 election results. But after his second term expires, he may also face legal peril from international courts for his actions in Venezuela and Iran.

Trump has signaled some awareness of his precarious perch. At a gathering of House Republicans at the Kennedy Center in January, he told the assembled, “You got to win the midterms, because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just going to be—I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me,” Trump told the lawmakers. “I’ll get impeached.”

Yet impeachment may be the least of Trump’s worries. Ford argues that the nation’s political system must use “every tool possible to achieve a measure of justice. This will involve not only impeachment, but also civil lawsuits, professional sanctions, restrictive acts of Congress, and the enforcement of international law against Trump administration officials by long-standing American allies.”

This time around, though, the legal landscape Trump faces is much less favorable for prosecutors eager for revenge.

“During Trump’s first term, Justice Department guidelines forbade prosecutions of sitting presidents, delaying any potential proceedings until after his term ended," Ford writes. "This time, prosecutors will also have to contend with Trump v. United States. The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on 'presidential immunity' in 2024 fundamentally changed the executive branch and how it operates within the American constitutional order.”

Chief Justice John Roberts’s opinion laid out the scope of presidential immunity in that ruling. Only if something is an unofficial act does immunity not apply. “And if a former president’s official acts are routinely subjected to scrutiny in criminal prosecutions, the independence of the Executive Branch may be significantly undermined," Ford notes.

To the court’s liberals, Ford writes, the dangers were obvious. Justice Sonia Sotomayor believed that it would now be impossible to prosecute a former president for assassinating his political rivals or taking bribes. “Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent. “The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”

If American institutions fail to hold the Trump administration accountable, other countries might be able to fill the gap, Ford writes. “Because of alleged international law violations, the former president and his subordinates could also face heightened difficulties — and potential criminal charges — if they travel overseas in the future.”

The administration’s unlawful military strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific have opened the door to criminal charges overseas, Ford notes. The wars against Iran and Venezuela could bring more such charges.

While the mechanisms of accountability are important, “the spirit that drives them is just as vital,” Ford concludes. "A jail cell may not await Trump. But after another four years of defiling the republic, there will be no post-presidential peace for him or his top associates.”

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) claims President Donald Trump is in denial when it comes to the price of oil. And the congressman doesn’t understand if Trump even has a vision for ending the conflict.

Speaking with host Tim Miller on The Bulwark podcast, Khanna was asked to espond to a presidential statement where Trump mused that the U.S. should finish off what’s left of the “terrorist state,” and then let the countries that need the Strait of Hormuz deal with getting it back up and running.

Khanna said “the president doesn’t understand global supply and demand for oil.” Stopping the oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, “It’s going to push prices up for everyone.” Although, he conceded, “Great for Midland.”

“Just go to your gas pump and you’ll see prices are up,” Khanna said.

As the war appears to be dragging on and the Iranian regime shows no signs of surrender, Trump has also shown no signs of a master strategy to turn that around.

“There’s no coherence to the policy,” Khanna said, noting that Trump thinks he’ll win “by just terrorizing the regime.”

Even Trump, at times, has said that he doesn’t want Iranian protesters to “get slaughtered,” Khanna said, but how to alleviate that remains unclear.

Khanna added, “Like, I don’t understand what the plan is. Even in Iraq, you had to put in ground troops. I don’t know a scenario (that wins in Iran) through just air strikes and bombing. “

Right now, it’s status quo in Congressman as far as backing the president. Khanna said his colleagues on the Hill are sticking with Trump’s war narrative - though with a little less chest-thumping.

The race to throw dirt on former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent’s allegations about the Iran war has a “disturbingly familiar” feel, according to one former top official from the Department of Homeland Security.

Kent punctured President Donald Trump’s public reasons for the Iran war while resigning from his post. Kent’s resignation letter said that Iran “posed no imminent threat,” making Trump into a liar over his statements that the U.S. was acting in self-defense.

“A president must demonstrate that the danger was real, urgent and left no time for deliberation,” said an iPaper analysis from Miles Taylor, a former chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “That’s why, hours after the (Iran) offensive began, Trump quickly released a statement saying his objective was “eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.”

Trump predictably tried to downplay Kent’s contrary statements, saying that he found him to be “weak on security.”

But as Taylor writes, “you don’t diffuse a bomb by insulting it.”

At some point, investigators, prosecutors and congressional committees will dig into the Kent allegations. They will have reason to ask the question that eventually brought down Richard Nixon in the Watergate era: “What did the President know and when did he know it?”

The question may get its first airing during the congressional committee asking U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard questions. She will have to state under oath whether there was indeed an imminent threat.

Taylor posed other questions that will emerge at some point: “What did the President know about Iranian intentions and capabilities before the first strike? What did his intelligence community tell him about the timeline of any threat? Did he ignore or override assessments that contradicted a decision he’d already made? Did he knowingly mislead Congress?”

Meanwhile, Kent will not go away quietly. He is set to hit the podcasting circuit, which will keep his allegations in the news.

Taylor anticipates what the White House reaction will be. “I know something about how this President handles inconvenient truths. I served in the first Trump administration as his chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, and I resigned in protest because of what I saw. On matters of life and death, I encountered a president whose national security decision-making was ad hoc, impulsive and often recklessly indifferent to facts that complicated his preferred course of action.”

Trump “didn’t weigh options,” Taylor adds. “He made decisions and then demanded justifications after the fact, including when policies were foreseeably unlawful.”

That formula and the attacks on Kent look “disturbingly familiar,” Taylor writes. He predicts others will join in “what is beginning to look like a fracturing dam.”

“Aides to the President will continue to attack Kent and limit the fallout,” Miller writes. “In reality, they’re terrified of what comes next. In the first term, when people like me started resigning in protest, it wasn’t an aberration. It became a wave. And that wave swept Trump out of the White House.”

The war in Iran has shown that President Donald Trump’s foreign policy has gone terribly wrong, writes Jennifer Rubin in a Substack for The Contrarian.

The result has left the U.S. in a difficult position, now and in the future, as "Trump blew up five key aspects of his foreign policy."

“War against Iran has underscored that his preference for wars of aggression for specious reasons, mistreatment of democratic allies, genuflection toward Russia, economic illiteracy and forfeiture of America’s moral standing in the world have been disastrous for the United States and for his presidency,” Rubin writes.

The five missteps:

1. Trump’s war shows the limits of hard power. Trump has “pulled us into a dangerous quagmire,” Rubin writes. “Trump, better than any critic, has proved that America’s military cannot solve all its problems and its indiscriminate use may create far more serious dangers.” Now the Iranians are emboldened and will continue to reign missiles on its neighbors and the U.S. is tied to Israel’s needs in the conflict. “Regime change is not coming,” Rubin notes.
2. Trump’s Russia fixation looks even worse now. "Russians give intelligence to Iran to kill our troops and rake in more oil money, thereby humiliating their puppet in the Oval Office.” On the other hand, Ukraine has emerged as “the foremost authority of drones and counter-drone operations, the Washington Institute of Near East policy explains.”
3. Trump’s bluster that “We don’t need anybody; we’re the strongest nation in the world” has backfired. Now, Rubin writes, “he is left to beg pathetically for help, which will not be forthcoming. If Trump thinks America can go it alone, our allies have responded: Just try it.”
4. Trump has put the economy in trouble. “Inflation is rising; U.S. consumers are still paying tariffs) also has come home to roost.“ Surging oil prices will raise costs across the economy, Rubin says, citing the New York Times.
5. Trump has made the U.S. “a pariah." Rubin writes the president has “given our enemies the perfect rationale to discredit the U.S. as a selfish, colonialist power. And he has given democratic (as well as quasi- or undemocratic) countries precisely no reason to choose the U.S. model/alliance over China’s.”

Rubin concludes, “Trump’s aggressive strikes prove that his sadistic embrace of war, contempt for allies, infatuation with Putin/antipathy for Ukraine, economic illiteracy and disdain for America’s moral standing are disastrous for him, MAGA and the country.”

It’s long been a “stock social media joke” that MAGA stands for whatever President Donald Trump says it is. The Iran war has confirmed that's no joke, writes Greg Sargent in The New Republic.

“THEY ARE NOT MAGA, I AM,” Trump posted on Truth Social against his supporters who oppose the war in Iran. In Trump’s view, MAGA entails “not allowing Iran, a Sick, Demented, and Violent Terrorist Regime, to have a Nuclear Weapon.”

That’s problematic for a candidate who promised “no new wars,” Sargent notes. “Anyone who dissents from Trump’s war of choice ... faces potential excommunication from the MAGA movement.”

Such contempt for those who might have “legitimate worries about the Iran war is basically boundless,” Sargent writes.

The war over who is really MAGA extends to the media. On one side are Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson and Andrew Sullivan, who oppose the war as doing Israel’s bidding, Sargent writes. On the other side are Mark Levin of Fox News and Ben Shapiro.

“This conflict among influencers primarily involves MAGA voices turning against the America-Israel alliance. It seems less focused on the general suspicion of foreign entanglements — and anger at elites who brought us the Forever Wars in the Mideast — that supposedly drive MAGA,” Sargent writes.

The defining moment arrived when Joe Kent, the director of National Counterterrorism Center, resigned his post, stating, “I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people.”

Sargent notes Kent has many problematic views, being anti-Israel among them, but “we can distinguish between the likes of Kent and Carlson and their followers. Clearly some segments of their audiences genuinely oppose wars of choice.”

Trump rejects their independence and erases any debate, Sargent writes. “In suggesting that critics of the war on Iran “ARE NOT MAGA,” Trump also declared that “MAGA is about stopping them cold” before they get a nuke to “blow up” the United States and “the world.”

In Trump’s formulation, Sargent concludes, “anyone who harbors doubts about the threat Iran posed is commanded to accept it as a settled question. Because Trump said so.”

That is uncomfortable even for members of the administration.

“Just look at the gyrations of JD Vance,” Sargent writes. Vance’s position now contradicts past misgivings on foreign entanglements: He says, “Now we have a president who knows how to accomplish America’s national security objectives” and won’t get sucked into “some long, drawn-out thing.’ ”

'Trumpworld’s redefinition of MAGA is a farce," Sargent concludes, adding, the ultimate issue is “the naked contempt (such a position) shows for the voters who are obviously expected to simply roll over and unthinkingly accept it."

President Donald Trump’s Senior Adviser, Peter Navarro, once suggested that the Trump tariffs would generate $700 billion per year.

Not so, says one researcher.

Writing in Reason, Research Fellow Jack Salmon from the Mercatus Center takes issue with Navarro’s apparently inflated numbers.

“At the time (of their announcement), I estimated that a more realistic estimate of the maximum additional revenue these tariffs could reap was likely less than $300 billion, which would barely fund two weeks of federal government spending,” Salmon writes.

Citing customs duties revenue data as evidence, Salmon suggests his prediction has been borne out, “far closer to reality than what the administration was promising.”

Tariff revenues did tick up during this 11-month period, Salmon notes, averaging just under $27 billion a month from April 2025 through February 2026. That’s “roughly $296 billion in cumulative tariff revenues since” the tariffs were announced, Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day.”

Salmon uses that monthly average to predict March’s total will bring the year’s revenue to about $323 billion.

There is a catch even to that lower number than the administration’s predictions. It’s not all “Liberation Day” forward. “In the year leading up to April 2025, the treasury already collected about $83 billion in customs duties.”

That means, by Salmon’s estimate, Trump's tariffs led to about $240 billion in additional revenue within 12 months. To put it another way, that’s “enough revenue to fund an additional 12 days of federal government spending,” Salmon says.

“If we were to use a slightly more generous measure of monthly tariff revenue by annualizing only the monthly collections when the effective tariff rate was 10 percent or more, then we get about $264 billion, or enough to fund about 13 additional days of government spending.”

Adding to the downside, Salmon cites the negative economic impact of tariffs and broader trade uncertainty. “That means that economic output was lower over the last year than it would have been absent tariffs. The Yale Budget Lab estimated that this dynamic effect reduces tariff revenues by at least $41 billion this year.”

Adjusted for those effects, additional tariff revenue covers only 10 or 11 days of government spending, rather than 12 or 13, Salmon contends. That of course, is subject to whether refunds are going to be made.

“The past year provides a useful reality check on claims that tariffs can meaningfully improve the federal government's fiscal position,” Salmon said.

He concludes that the lesson here is straightforward: “Tariffs cannot solve the federal government's fiscal imbalance. If policymakers are serious about addressing the deficit, they will have to look beyond protectionist taxes and confront what's really driving our deficits, namely out of control growth in entitlement spending.”

Producer and columnist Steve Benen claims that President Donald Trump seems eager to prove his critics right.

Writing in MS Now, Benen cites a laundry list of Trump failures in economics, the Iran War, his battles with perceived enemies, and his tariffs loss at the Supreme Court. He adds that Trump is “historically unpopular, at least in part because two-thirds of Americans are convinced that Trump simply has the wrong priorities.”

“By any fair measure, 14 months into his second term, Donald Trump’s presidency is failing,” Benen writes.

What’s even worse is that Trump seems eager to prove to his critics that he indeed has the wrong priorities. At a recent press conference, he fielded questions on what Benen terms “a wide variety of subjects - not because reporters asked questions about them, but because the president wouldn’t stop bringing them up.”

Speaking at a Trump-Kennedy Center luncheon, Trump “went on and on about, of all things, paint,” Benen writes. This while a war rages.

“There’s actually never been a paint that’s made that will look like gold. … Either gold leaf it or use real gold bullion, or you use a different color,” Trump said. “Nobody’s ever been able to make a gold paint that looks real. A little minor thing for the media. I’m sure you’re thrilled with hearing that. But there’s never been a paint. I said, ‘Someday I’m going to discover a paint where you don’t have to actually use gold leaf.’ Gold leaf is a very, very big and expensive process, but it’s a beautiful thing, but not when you use paint.”

He also waxed rhapsodic on his marble preferences, his White House ballroom projects, curtains, and the Kennedy Center’s “bones.”

Trump then talked about Disney going “woke” and an upcoming Ultimate Fighting Championship bout at the White House.

“Did I mention that the president also blurted out private medical information about a member of Congress?” Benen asked. Trump did that, too.

While it was a “jarring display,” Benen said, “it was not unusual.”

In recent weeks, Trump has been heard in public pontificating about the Super Bowl halftime show, finding things to put his name on, and handicapping the Grammy Awards. He also called out comedians who made fun of him, and found time to play a lot of golf at his various properties.

Benen noted the irony in Trump’s appeal of the E. Jean Carroll case. His attorneys claimed that he was “simply too busy” to deal with the civil litigation, which Benen says was “odd for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that Trump doesn’t seem focused on his weighty responsibilities at all.”

Benen cited recent polling that found 68% of Americans believe the president has the wrong priorities. He concluded, “it’s amazing to watch him try to push that number higher.”

President Donald Trump engaged in a “blitzkrieg” on the U.S. since his second term started, writes Chauncey DeVega in Salon. It was remarkably effective in changing the nation’s institutions, rule of law and political culture, DeVega states.

But a year later, things have changed and the picture is more complicated.

“Trump has failed to fully consolidate power,” DeVega writes. “With his popularity at an historic low for a president at this point in his term, his unfitness for office is undeniable to all but the most diehard members of the MAGA personality cult.”

That plunge in popularity for the Trump agenda has been a “grossly underreported story,” DeVega writes. That may be because it’s happening in places that are less in the media spotlight of the coasts.

Recent research backs that contention.

DeVega cites Erica Chenoweth, director of the Nonviolent Action Lab at Harvard University’s Kennedy School. That institute claims protest participation in counties that voted for Trump has increased by 60%.

Since those counties are more rural and less populated, the overall numbers are still small. Drawing on data from 2025, she found that, on average, 65 people per 10,000 total have engaged in anti-Trump protests.

But the geographic data is compelling. “Chenoweth’s data shows a notable rise in protests in deep red areas — in some cases, organizers reported, the first anti-Trump events their towns and communities had ever seen,” DeVega writes. Chenoweth likened it to the shift of the Black Lives Matter protests in October 2025, which she said in an Oct. 2025 interview “at the time were the largetand broadest mass mobilization in U.S. history.”

The conclusion Chenowrth draws on this new red state growth in Trump protests: “We do think we’re seeing a shift in the willingness of people in pro-Trump areas in the country to participate in a broader mass movement emerging in opposition to many of his administration’s policies.”

Further research shows anti-Trump momentum in West Virginia, North Carolina and Texas, among other rural areas, DeVega notes. A particular sore point in those areas is the construction of large warehouses to house undocumented immigrants and others. Most of the buildings would be constructed in rural areas.

“Despite the economic argument for their presence, local organizing against them is real and growing,” DeVega writes. “The motivations are mixed. Most notably, there is principled opposition to the Trump administration’s cruelty, and there’s also the “not-in-my-backyard” resistance. But whatever its motivations, the pushback is very real.”

Growing the anti-Trump movement in the rural and red state areas is a key if Democrats hope to capitalize, DeVega writes. “Chenoweth’s research suggests that sustained protests by just 3.5% of the population can produce serious political change.”

That’s enough to swing a tight race. DeVega concludes that the emerging evidence shows that Trumpism isn’t forever. Instead, “The evidence emerging from Trumplandia tells a very different story.”

President Donald Trump’s praise for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh might hamper any future nominees, a story in Reason opines.

Trump has been angry that two out of the three justices (Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett) that he appointed to the Supreme Court voted against him in their recent tariffs ruling. He called them "an embarrassment to their families" in one particularly vehement jab.

But Reason contends “what's actually embarrassing is the kind of praise that Trump is now heaping upon the one Trump-appointed justice who did vote in his favor,” i.e. Kavanaugh.

Trump can’t seem to move on from his tariffs defeat. "The decision that mattered most to me was TARIFFS!" Trump posted on social media. And "the Court knew where I stood" and "how badly I wanted this Victory for our Country."

He added, "The Democrats on the Court always 'stick together. But Republicans do not do this. They openly disrespect the Presidents who nominate them to the highest position in the Land."

Kavanaugh may have cringed a little bit when he read that, Reason said, adding, “If not, he should have.”

That’s because Trump is praising Kavanaugh, Reason claims, “for exhibiting deference and fidelity to the president who gave him his job. In effect, Trump is publicly patting Kavanaugh on the back for acting grateful and toeing the line.”

What’s worse than Kavanaugh’s potential humiliation is what Trump’s praise may foreshadow. It will also likely “demean any future SCOTUS nominees that Trump may get to put forward.”

If Justice Samuel Alioto retires, as rumors suggest, the Trump nominee to replace him would face an extremely uncomfortable question at their confirmation hearing.

“That nominee will undoubtedly be asked if he or she can be trusted to rule against the president who appointed them if that's what the Constitution required in a particular case,” Reason wrote. “In the past, answering such a question would have been a total no-brainer for any nominee: "Of course I'll put the Constitution first, Senator! What kind of lickspittle do you think I am?"

But perhaps the nominee may think twice about showing such independence and drawing Trump’s wrath. Perhaps such “disrespect” would even lead to Trump pulling the plug on the nomination, Reason concludes.

Tightening mail-in voting rules could wind up backfiring for its Republican backers, say lawmakers and experts who spoke to Bloomberg News.

President Donald Trump has been pushing hard on new mail-in voting rules, even as his GOP colleagues worry that it will hurt them most. They fear the measure could eliminate legitimate registered voters who help carry elections and prefer that option.

Trump favors limiting mail-in ballots with only a few exceptions, claiming fraudulent voting led to his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden. His push is backing the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE America Act (S. 1383; BGOV Bill Analysis). That would require voters to show documentary proof of citizenship to register.

About 64 percent of eligible voters participated in the 2024 presidential election and 46 percent for the 2022 midterms, according to the Pew Research Center. Of those, some 29 percent of voters cast ballots by mail in 2024, while nearly one-third did so in 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Right now, the legislation doesn’t specifically limit voting by mail. But attaching restrictions on mail-in voting is anticipated when the bill comes up in the Senate this week, Bloomberg reports. Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) is among those seeking an amendment to get “rid of this mass mail-in balloting scam,” as he terms it, with some allowances for military and elderly voters.

Bloomberg cites research that claims vote-by-mail laws don’t consistently favor one party over the other.

“Once they started mail-in voting, people just loved it,” Utah state Rep. Christine Watkins (R), who represents a rural district in the state, said to Bloomberg. “I know federal law trumps us—no pun intended—but people here wouldn’t like” getting rid of mail voting.

Several red states have also introduced bills tightening voting by mail rules. The Voting Rights Lab reports 43 restrictive bills have been proposed across 19 states this year.

Both parties are closely watching how changes to mail-voting rules could affect turnout in key districts, Bloomberg reports.

“Mail ballots can be the difference between winning and losing,” Matt Wylie, a GOP strategist based in South Carolina, said to the wire service. “If voters who normally cast ballots by mail have to show up on Election Day instead, fewer Republicans will. You risk losing seats you shouldn’t lose by going to war with something that can be a valuable tool.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said earlier this month that he plans to add “good amendments along the way” to SAVE America.

Thune claimed “ballot harvesting” is the “real threat,” referring to the practice of collecting and submitting ballots on behalf of other voters.

“As a general rule, if people are requesting ballots, and they’ve got legitimate reasons for requesting them, I think a lot of states use that process and use it pretty well,” Thune said.

There have always been crazy people online, admits host Mona Charon on her podcast for The Bulwark. But now, she said in a conversation with Will Sommer who writes the False Flag newsletter, “It is unbelievable how far things have gone.”

Candace Owens, Charon says, “strikes me as a lunatic,” She cited Owens’ contention that Emmanuel Macron's wife, Brigitte, is a man, or that Erika Kirk played a role in her husband’s assassination.

These people have real influence,” said Sommer,and they have had real successes in manipulating the political scene, as with Owens undermining Turning Point USA’s influence.

“And often, that can affect what happens in the White House.”

The average person, Sommer added, may look at them and understand they’re crazy. “But it can be helpful to understand what they’re up to.”

No matter how outlandish, those on the receiving end of the attacks have to react. Witness Erika Kirk meeting with Owens after her accusations gained steam. Although that meeting didn’t sway Owens, who continued on the attack.

Charon. noted that “there’s a theme that runs through a lot of these people that you chronicle, and that is antisemitism.” That led to the mention of Nick Fuentes.

Sommer noted that “Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes dabble in much more antisemitism” than right wing pundits ever dared before.

Carlso, Charon said, is “deeply frightening” to her. “Of all of them, he is the one who deeply scares me.” That’s because of his charisma, she said.

Sommer agreed that Carlson has the ability to bring people along on even the wildest rides, noting his “testicle tanning” segment. But Carlson is also canny and playing on some of the same themes that VP JD Vance is. If Carlson decides to run for president, that makes him dangerous, Sommer said, because unlike Vance, he’s not burdened by the Trump administration. “So (Carlson) doesn't have to defend the war in Iran.”

Also coming in for scrutiny was Steve Bannon, even though he’s “made a lot of enemies on the right,” Sommer said, and Marjorie Taylor Green, who was tagged with the antisemitism brush as well.

A veteran FBI special agent claims the agency is “consumed by politically motivated revenge and conspiracy theories, distracting the F.B.I., once again, from the danger of terrorism.”

Writing in The New York Times, Jacqueline Maguire said the spreading war with Iran significantly elevates the regime’s threat to Americans at home and abroad.

That means, she claims, “the F.B.I. must return its focus to its core work: protecting Americans from terrorists and cyberattacks and halting foreign intelligence operations and espionage.”

But nothing in the age of Trump 2.0 is ever that simple.

Although the FBI in her 2000-era tenure was admittedly “distracted from the threat by Al Qaeda that had taken root in the United States,” the agency quickly got up to speed after 9/11. It bolstered its national security work, she claimed.

However, the author of the piece was among those “pushed out” of the FBI last year when the Trump administration started its second term in January 2025. Among the dozens who departed were Iran specialists.

Iran “is the world’s most prolific state sponsor of terrorism and, through its proxies and its own direct recruitment abroad, culpable for the deaths of hundreds of Americans,” Maguire writes. “In recent years, it has increasingly targeted Americans at home, using its own direct network controlled by the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the external operations branch of the ayatollah’s powerful military force.”

“Their agenda (included) a plan to assassinate Mr. Trump,” Maguire claims. Iran also poses a cyber threat to water and wastewater systems in this country, disabled bank websites, and prevented logins to various accounts. Those actions cost American businesses millions of dollars to neutralize.

“Against that backdrop, the current sophomoric leadership of the F.B.I. is concerning,” Maguire writes. Particularly disturbing, she notes, was “a nonsensical partnership with the Ultimate Fighting Championship” recently enacted.

The firing of veteran agents is “particularly harmful now,” Maguire concludes. “Dismissing personnel out of spite, for no valid reason, makes the United States less safe — especially when some of those fired employees were steeped in the sort of counterintelligence work that prevents Iranian attacks.”

The Supreme Court is examining President Donald Trump’s executive order from Ja. 20, 2025. That order seeks to deny birthright citizenship to children born in the U.S. whose parents are in the country either illegally or on temporary visas.

Lawfaremedia.com reports that despite a vast number of supporting briefs in Trump v. Barbara, one key issue that undermines Trump's order has not received enough attention. Author and professor of law at George Mason University Ilya Somin contends the government's position would override the central purpose of the Citizenship Clause of the Constittution's Fourteenth Amendment. “For that reason alone, the Trump Administration should lose the case,” he writes.

The Citizenship Clause sought to grant citizenship to newly freed slaves and their descendants, a reversal of the 1857 Dred Scott decision. But all of the current administration's arguments would step on that.

The Citizenship Clause states that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The government's position in Barbara depends on the claim that children of undocumented migrants and temporary visa holders are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S.

The simplest argument for the government's position is the idea that illegal entry somehow prevents undocumented migrants and their American-born children from being subject to U.S. jurisdiction. "This is extremely dubious," Somkin writes, "because undocumented migrants are undeniably subject to U.S. law. But, if the argument is valid, it would also have excluded large numbers of freed slaves and their descendants."

Thus, “Any interpretation of the “subject to the jurisdiction” wording that requires denying birthright citizenship to large numbers of slaves and children thereof must be rejected, Somkin argues.

Another standard argument for the administration's position is that illegal migrants, non-citizens on temporary visas, and their children lack the requisite exclusive “allegiance” to the United States. That’s because they still owe allegiance to their countries of origin.

If, as this theory assumes, people owe allegiance to the government of the country they are born in, it obviously applies to virtually all freed slaves as well, even those brought into the U.S. legally.

Somkin goes on to refute arguments on the status of Native Americans and the so-called “domicile” theory, which claims that children of undocumented immigrants are not subject to U.S. jurisdiction because their parents are not properly domiciled in the U.S.

While there already exist exemptions to birthright citizenship - children of foreign diplomats and those born on foreign public ships in U.S. territorial waters are two examples - Somkin believes the link to slavery “provides a powerful additional rationale for ruling against the administration's position, one that negates every one of its arguments. All those theories are at odds with the main purpose of the Citizenship Clause and must be rejected for that reason alone."

President Donald Trump has grown accustomed to doing what he wants and then quickly improvising if things go south, says Axios.

But this time, some in his inner circle have what one official called "buyer's remorse" — growing fears that attacking Iran was a mistake.

Axios reports that a source close to the administration said some key officials around Trump were reluctant or wanted more time. "He ended up saying, 'I just want to do it,'" the source said. "He grossly overestimated his ability to topple the regime short of sending in ground troops."

The Axios source said Trump was "high on his own supply" after last summer's quick strikes in Iran and January's abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro: "He saw multiple decisive quick victories with extraordinary military competence."

Some officials close to him had hoped he'd be able to show some quick gains and declare victory, Axios states. Now, it's not apparent how he'd do that convincingly. “The Iran war, now entering Week 3, is the first time Trump’s style has made it impossible for him to easily talk or improvise his way out.”

What’s happening now is that Trump risks getting caught in an “escalation trap” as he works to free the oil jam in the Persian Gulf. The escalation trap is “where a stronger force is incentivized to keep attacking to demonstrate dominance amid diminishing returns.”

An anonymous Trump administration official laid it out for Axios reporter Marc Caputo: “The Iranians f——ing around with the Strait [of Hormuz] makes (Trump) more dug in.”

Pressure from Israel is also a factor in the escalation trap. Axios contends Trump has a history of being convinced by Benjamin Netanyahu to take his side. For the Iranians' part, survival is the key, and its retaliation proves “it can impose pain, militarily and economically, to scare off future attacks.”

Unlike tariffs that are easily yanked, the Iran war’s outcome “is beyond unilateral control and quick fixes. And Iran gets a say,” Axios states.

Axios notes that it’s fair to assume the Trump administration expected the conflict to run about 4 to 6 weeks. That timeline would make April 1 (day 33 of the war) “a real gut-check moment.”

There is no easy path out for Trump, Axios claims. “The Iranians have made it clear in private and in public that even if Trump decides to end the war, they could continue shooting missiles and rockets until they get guarantees that this is the end of the war, not just a temporary ceasefire.”

Trump faces new territory now, Axios says. He has to make a decision on a significant military escalation. He had hoped for some gains that would allow him to declare victory. But that’s not happening.

Kyrsten Sinema believes it’s all about location, location, location when it comes to her homewrecking affair with a former bodyguard.

The ex-Arizona Senator, who claimed earlier this month in sworn statements that she’s didn’t know Matthew Joseph Ammel, the security guard she had an affair with, now has provided day and date details about her sexual encounters with him.

But she’s also claiming that since almost none of her relationship with him happened in North Carolina, the state where his ex-wife Heather is suing her, that the lawsuit should be dismissed.

The confession flip-flop is par for the course for the flamboyant Sinema. The end of her Senate time was marked by media calling her a “caricature” that experienced “one of the greatest political implosions of my lifetime,” as one columnist opined. Her spending, particularly the use of taxpayer-funded private jets, came under intense scrutiny.

Sinema decided against seeking reelection in Arizona's 2024 U.S. Senate race, the same year her sexual rendezvous with the guard allegedly began. Sinema revealed that she and guard became “romantic and intimate” in May 2024, and that they first had physical intimacy while in Sonoma, California, on May 27, per court documents cited by TMZ.

In the following months, the pair had sexual liasions in New York City, Washington, D.C., Aspen, and Phoenix, Sinema claimed. However, Sinema insists they were never intimate in North Carolina, so she can’t be sued there, according to TMZ.

Additionally, Sinema denied sending a graphic picture of herself to Matthew, as TMZ reported.

Matthew and Heather eventually separated in November 2024. Heather then filed for divorce from Matthew, with whom she shares three kids, in March 2025.

Heather’s initial complaint claimed the affair began when Matthew was hired to Sinema’s security team in 2022.

In Heather’s initial complaint, she claimed Sinema “began to willfully and intentionally seduce, entice, and alienate the affections of Mr. Ammel” after he was hired to her security team in 2022.

Matthew initially won joint custody of their children, but had his visits suspended after being arrested on felony charges of assault and strangulation.

President Donald Trump has learned that creating “fake emergencies” is the best way to get things done with his various agendas while invoking obscure laws as justification.

That’s the opinion of Lisa Needham, writing in Public Notice, who says Trump, backed by the Department of Justice's favorable interpretations, basically declares something an emergency, then acts. That’s pushing the U.S. toward autocracy, she argues.

“It does things with no legal justification at all. It does things based on legal justifications that are obviously false. It does things based on legal justifications that have never been used before. It does things based on legal justifications that stretch far beyond reason," she observes.

“And it does so, always, by saying there is some emergency that allows — even requires — such action,” Needham writes.

Trump and his Department of Justice have invoked “little-known, sometimes even never-before-used laws” to justify their “emergency” actions. “That confounds the courts a bit as they are forced to grapple with scenarios where there isn’t a well-developed body of law,” Needham writes.

Add in the judiciary’s traditional defense of the executive branch, and it basically gives Trump a green light on almost anything, particularly if national security is invoked.

Needham cites four ways Trump has manipulated the law to his advantage:

1. The administration has invoked “a mishmash of domestic law” to justify Caribbean boat bombings and Iran.
2. Existing immigration laws were “cobbled together” to allow the administration to pretend there’s some legal authority for their actions.
3. Trump also relied on “never- or seldom-used laws about presidential authority” to deploy active-duty troops domestically.
4. Finally, he used emergency powers to justify his “sweeping, random, and retaliatory tariffs.”

Needham dismissed the few limitations the Supreme Court imposed on Trump’s powers “related far more to ensuring the safety of some justices’ pocketbooks rather than the safety of immigrants, Americans living in blue cities and unarmed fishermen and fishing boats in the Caribbean.”

Needham feels the judiciary is not blameless. “Courts are tangled up in this mess, playing whack-a-mole with each new development, while the rest of us try to survive a lawless, dangerous presidency.”

But courts are typically conservative and cautious entities, Needham concedes, writing, "their work is built on precedent, on looking at what has come before.”

That deliberation takes time. “And that’s a weakness in the judicial system that Trump exploits over and over again," she adds.

FEMA insiders have been warning that outgoing Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s Noem’s policies are hampering operations and their ability to respond to disasters.

The consequence of that may be lives lost. Delayed contract approvals has “slowed FEMA’s ability to pre-position crucial search-and-rescue teams, left call centers understaffed, and delayed the sharing of data with state partners,” CNN reports.

When tornadoes hit the Midwest and Plains last weekend, state and local search-and-rescue crews had to work without a critical tornado-tracking tool typically provided by FEMA. The tool follows a storm’s destructive path and allows rescuers to quickly reach those most affected.

The $200,000 contract for that crucial tool was sitting on a desk awaiting approval, leaving rescue teams literally guessing on where storms had the worst impact.

CNN reports “thousands of FEMA spending requests” have stalled between Noem and FEMA acting chief Karen Evans. “Many have been slashed, others have sat for months,” sources claim and documents show.

Noem is scheduled to leave her position atop DHS at the end of March. For now, her team continues to oversee FEMA’s operations.

Beyond Noem's tight spending policies, the government shutdown has stalled activity at the DHS, which oversees FEMA. Noem directed FEMA to scale back to “bare-minimum, live-saving operations only.”

In a follow-up email to the agency’s regional leaders, FEMA’s Karen Evans wrote that “all activities at FEMA need to cease.”

Much of FEMA’s work usually continues during government shutdowns. That’s because it’s tied to the Disaster Relief Fund, a pot of money Congress provides for disasters and emergencies.

This time, staffers were told there were only four exceptions to the no-work edict: things tied to President Trump’s State of the Union address, response to winter storms, meetings on the upcoming World Cup and Olympics, and “Nuclear activities.”

“People are being told not to even open their computers,” a high-ranking FEMA official said to CNN about their regional office. “It’s the most appalling experience of my professional life.”

“It’s a huge waste of time and taxpayer money for no reason, just to make the impact of the shutdown more significant,” another FEMA official said to CNN.

Meanwhile, Noem and the Trump administration blame Democrats for the DHS shutdown. Democrats support standalone funding for several agencies, including FEMA, but face Republican opposition.

A task force to help reform FEMA is set to present its final list of recommendations in the coming weeks.

At a Pentagon recent press briefing, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth closed his remarks with a reading from the Bible’s Book of Psalms, ending with “Amen.”

That was not the first time Hegseth has used prominent Christian declarations in public, and it’s apparently bleeding over to others in the military. Some members of Congress are now calling for a Department of Defense investigation into military officers allegedly invoking the Bible in pursuit of the Iran war.

What is clear is that Hegseth and others are putting an evangelical Christian nationalist spin on a range of things, from Charlie Kirk's murder to the military and Iran. That is fraught with implications during a war with a nation where the main religion is Islam.

Hegseth has been hosting monthly worship services, overlaying Scripture on images of fighter jets and missile systems, and telling assembled troops the country needed to be “on bended knee, recognizing the providence of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

That, says the Religion News Service (RNS) “raises the uncomfortable question” of what the language of Christianity means for the DoG while at war.

Diving into that question, the RNS repeated an interview that aired last year on the podcast “Complexified” between host Amanda Henderson and RNS reporter Jack Jenkins.

Jenkins said that historically, religious expression in the U.S. military is not uncommon. “We’ve had many a military leader reference God or Christianity at some point in some sort of vague ways that are often kind of considered part of what’s referred to as the civil religion of the United States — kind of these more vague appeals,” Jenkins said. The Pentagon, Jenkins notes, has chaplains, hosts Mass five times a week, and houses a chapel that regularly holds worship services for a myriad of different faith traditions.

But Hegseth’s approach seems to center his form of Christianity, Jenkins said.

Hegseth spoke at the Charlie Kirk memorial and once again seemed to center his own version of Christianity rather than the more traditional vague invocations, Jenkins said.

“He again made this overt appeal to Americans to also embrace the specific kind of Christianity that he was modeling,” Jenkins said. Now, he’s not saying, like, ‘Join my denomination.’ But it’s very clearly coming from an evangelical Christian space.”

Another way that is being demonstrated is in military recruitment videos. Many of the promotional videos for the U.S. military overlay imagery of weapons of war and service members with a Bible verse.

That raises the question of whether they’re intentionally trying to recruit people “with the idea that the U.S. military is also something that can be held in concert with one specifically evangelical Christian faith,” Jenkins said.

Whether there has been pushback on this overt religion trend is unclear, Jenkins said. But given its ongoing presence in the public proclamations, an order to halt is unlikely.

The FBI warned police departments in California just before the Iran war started that drones could target the West coast.

ABC News reports that an alert was sent out on the last day of February that Iran could retaliate for American attacks

“We recently acquired information that as of early February 2026, Iran allegedly aspired to conduct a surprise attack using unmanned aerial vehicles from an unidentified vessel off the coast of the United State Homeland, specifically against unspecified targets in California, in the event that the US conducted strikes against Iran,” according to the alert distributed at the end of February.

“We have no additional information on the timing, method, target, or perpetrators of this alleged attack.”

Iran has been retaliating with drone strikes against targets throughout the Mideast.

A spokeswoman for the FBI office in Los Angeles declined to comment. The city has a large Iranian population, particularly in wealthy Beverly Hills.

Republican Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) blew up at an NBC News crew that attempted to ask him a question on an apparent flip-flop in his views.

Cornyn wrote an op-ed for the New York Post in which he claimed to support “whatever changes to Senate rules that may prove necessary for us to get the ‘SAVE America Act’ (passed) and homeland security funding.”

Those changes may include ending the longstanding Senate filibuster tactic, he noted, ”or it could be a different reform.”

The “SAVE America” legislation would require proof-of-citizenship to register and photo ID to vote in person or by mail. There would also be a requirement for states to check their voter rolls through a Department of Homeland Security database.

The Cornyn New York Post op-ed marked a change from the Senator’s previous stance. He had a track record of staunch support for the filibuster and the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to pass most bills.

“I spent years defending the filibuster because the 60-vote threshold was a net benefit to Texas and our nation,” Cornyn wrote in the Post. “Before moderate Democrats went extinct, the rules worked.”

NBC News wanted Cornyn to amplify his new views. Their subsequent story speculated that the senator’s change of heart came because Cornyn needs President Donald Trump's endorsement to push him over the top in a competitive Republican runoff for his Senate seat.

But he wasn’t in the mood to talk about it.

“You previously said that nuking the filibuster would be taking a wrecking ball to Senate rules,” an NBC reporter asked. “Is that no longer true?”

“Um, I said I’d be open to reforms,” Cornyn replied.

:”What would you say to those who say you just changed your mind to win the president’s endorsement,” the reporter asked.

“I’d say, uh, that’s not true,” Coryn said, adding, “I think we’re through. Go ahead. Go away.”

The Senator then placed his hand over the NBC camera lens, ending the interview.

Although the law varies in certain jurisdictions, placing your hand over a camera lens is is generally considered offensive touching. That can rise to the crime of battery or assault in some jurisdictions if it’s done without consent.

Raw Story first reported the incident.

President Donald Trump’s “delusions of grandeur” inevitably overwhelm the Constitution, decency, political good sense and Americans’ distress.

That’s the opinion of Jennifer Rubin, who writes in The Contrarian that beyond the misery wrought by the Iran war, Trump and his administration almost seem to delight in inflicting suffering on the most vulnerable.

Her list of examples is extensive. Leading off are the more than 150 direct murders at sea, a violation of international law. The video game-like bombings were done “without effort to interdict the boats or seek definitive proof that the victims are ‘narco-terrorists.’”

Then there is the general cutback in Medicaid and the refusal to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies. Add to that the suspension of SNAP benefits during last year's government shutdown, “depriving kids, seniors, the disabled, and the working poor of food,” Rubin writes. That's a choice prior administrations chose not to take.

DOGE actions also caused pain.

“The MAGA crowd was delighted when DOGE minions cut vital government services, slashed jobs, and consigned children and adults overseas to death," Rubin writes. "Trump applauds when government workers lose their jobs.”

The Department of Homeland Security shutdown that has been underway since mid-February is also punching down, Rubin contends. “He and his MAGA toadies refused to separately fund TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard.”

Meanwhile, Trump continually “tries to cut vital social services in blue states, holding their residents hostage to his partisan power plays.”

The hidden tax on purchases imposed via tariffs is “forcing already strapped families and small businesses to pay more. The Trump regime tells Americans either they won’t pay for it, or if they do, it’s worth a recession.”

Why is this happening? Rubin claims Trump shows all the classic symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder. But it’s clear, even without an official diagnosis, “he inarguably cares nothing about (if not outright celebrates) deaths, illnesses, suffering, economic distress and any other harm he inflicts on those who refuse to worship him.”

The solution is simple, Rubin concludes. In eight months, “The voters still have the power to stop the MAGA runaway train of death and destruction.”

President Donald Trump is having an unhappy anniversary when it comes to his net approval rating.

CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten averaged a year’s worth of political polling and discovered Trump has a negative net approval rating for an entire year. That means Trump is more underwater than any president in this century, Enten claims.

“According to my average of polls, what we've been looking at is every day since March 12th, 2025, President Trump has been underwater. ... We have now reached the point in which Trump has been swimming with the fishes for a year.”

Independent voters are a key reason why, Enten says.

Compared to other presidents at this point in their second term, Trump’s 38 percent underwater approval is “worse than (Barack) Obama by 20 points. That is worse than George W. Bush by double digits,” even with Bush’s drag on approval caused by the botched Katrina hurricane recovery efforts, the Iraq war and the Great Recession.

A Fox News poll indicates the dissatisfaction with Trump stems from a belief that he’s focusing on the wrong things. Some 60 percent in general believe that, with a whopping 78 percent of independents holding that view, Enten says.

That indicates an extreme likelihood that the midterms will be a blue wave for Democrats.

“We've been talking about the House and pretty much every historical marker, all the prediction markets, all the polling, indicates that the Democrats are in the catbird seat when it comes back to taking back the House,” Enten said. “But how about combining it with the United States Senate? That is taking back the whole enchilada, taking back all of Congress.”

Enten labeled the prospect of Dems taking both bodies “quite shocking, because a lot of folks like myself thought Democrats would take back the House. But the idea of taking back the Senate as well, that is a pretty big deal.”