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President Donald Trump’s Republican Party should be performing worse than it currently is against their Democratic counterparts, according to an anti-Trump conservative. The economy continues to suffer under Trump, and because voters are noticing, Trump is sending signals that he plans on rigging the midterms.

So why aren’t Democrats doing better? The Dispatch staff writer Nick Catoggio shared some of his views on Monday.

“On May 31 the RealClearPolitics tracker had Democrats ahead of Republicans by 7.6 points, teeing up the sort of midterm drubbing for incumbent presidents to which Americans have grown accustomed over the last 40 years,” Catoggio wrote. “But a funny thing happened on the way to the blue wave: That lead has now shrunk to 4.7 points and the GOP is now polling at its highest level (43.9 percent) this year.”

He added, “Nate Silver’s generic ballot tracker has seen less of a shift, but there’s movement there too. On May 31, Democrats led by 7.1 points; today they lead by 5.9. That’s meaningfully less than the 7.6-point advantage they held at this point in 2018, when they went on to sweep House races.”

Catoggio speculated that part of the reason Democrats are struggling is because their brand is now associated with “socialism,” which has long been deemed taboo in American politics.

“He and his movement desperately need a foil,” Catoggio wrote. “And now, thanks to the [Democratic Socialists of America], they have one. I’m not sold on the theory that the new red scare explains the tightening generic ballot, though. At least, not all of it.”

Yet the conservative added that he is not convinced the Democrats’ rising socialism is in itself an adequate explanation.

“Even if we concede that socialism is an albatross for the party, it’s likely less of one than Trump is for Republicans,” Catoggio wrote. “A new CNBC poll asked Americans whether finding out that a candidate belongs to a particular political movement would make them more or less likely to vote for him or her. Discovering that someone is a democratic socialist led to a 32-50 split; discovering that someone is MAGA triggered a 27-57 divide by comparison.”

He added that voters may also fluctuate in their views toward Republicans because of the rising cost of gasoline.

“The cost of gasoline began rising after the U.S. attacked Iran on February 28 and continued to climb until around April 7, when the two sides agreed to a ceasefire,” Catoggio argued. “Prices then began to inch downward on hopes that pre-war levels of oil-tanker traffic might resume in the Strait of Hormuz—only to climb higher again in May, to a peak of more than $4.50 per gallon, when Iran refused to relinquish control of the strait.”

He added, “Coincidentally, May was also when Republicans’ generic-ballot polling cratered.” Catoggio later pointed out that when gas prices fell below $4 again in mid-June, “coincidentally, this was the period when Republicans’ generic-ballot polling recovered.”

In a similar vein, Catoggio argued that fluctuating feelings about the Iran war could explain the closer-than-expected generic ballot numbers of the midterm elections.

“Most of the recent generic ballot polling showing a GOP surge has been of registered voters, as is common at this stage of an election cycle,” Catoggio said. “But not every registered voter ultimately turns out, of course; for a clearer forecast of Election Day, you need to focus on likely voters. And Democrats have a big advantage among likely voters right now.”

He added, “The same Washington Post poll released this weekend that found them ahead by 3 points among registered voters saw the lead balloon to 8 among voters who say they’re ‘absolutely certain to vote.’ The share of Democrats who say they’re certain to vote this year exceeds the share of Republicans who say so by a wider margin than the share who said so in the ‘blue wave’ year of 2018, in fact. And Democrats are considerably more likely to say that it’s ‘more important’ to vote in 2026 vis-à-vis previous midterms than Republicans are.”

Catoggio concluded, “The red scare might be scary enough to alter voters’ preferences yet not scary enough to get them off the couch on Election Day, especially with bad news about the war and the economy drowning it out. But, barring a terrorist attack on the country or something similarly terrible, it’s the best bogeyman Trump’s got.”

US President Donald Trump declared Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—will be safe from arrest in the United States after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he was exploring whether he could apprehend the fugitive during his planned visit to the United Nations in September.

“Netanyahu will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America,” Trump said on his Truth Social network.

“He is fighting against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which recently killed 52,000 innocent protestors, and has spent the last 47 years killing American Soldiers, and others,” the president continued, citing a protest death claim made by opponents of the Iranian government, which said that 3,117 people were killed.

“The only ones that should be arrested,” Trump added, “are the people that led Iran into this unprecedented SPIRAL OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION, something that should have been dealt with years ago, by previous Presidents!”

The US and Israel are currently waging an illegal war of choice against Iran.

Trump’s post followed weekend remarks by Mamdani, who told The New York Times that Netanyahu “belongs in The Hague,” the Dutch city that’s home to both the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice, where a genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa in 2023 is pending.

“He’s a war criminal who has been charged by the International Criminal Court,” the mayor said. “I will follow the laws that we have here in New York City because I believe that there is an importance in following the law as a leader who presides over our city.”

“Whatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that’s what we will do, but we won’t be writing our own laws to that end,” he added.

Mamdani was asked about his remarks during a Monday press conference.

“We’re speaking about someone who’s the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant,” he said of Netanyahu. “And he’s the subject of this arrest warrant for alleged crimes against humanity, for war crimes, and he’s the architect of the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza as Israel’s prime minister. These are not facts of my personal assessment; they are facts of public record.”

“And I believe that when someone is charged with an International Criminal Court warrant, it’s something that should be taken seriously, whether it’s Benjamin Netanyahu or it’s [Russian President] Vladimir Putin, or whomever else,” Mamdani added. “What I’ve also made clear is that my administration will follow all applicable local laws. That is our commitment.”

Although neither the US nor Israel is an ICC member, Palestine is a state party to the Rome Statute, the treaty governing the tribunal, Articles 12 and 13 of the document say that individuals from nonsignatory nations can be held liable for crimes committed in the territory of a member state.

Article 27 of the Rome Statute also says that serving as a head of state or government, or as any elected official, “shall in no case exempt a person from criminal responsibility” before the court.

However, Article 98 of the treaty may limit governments’ obligation to execute an ICC arrest warrant in certain circumstances involving officials of nonparty states.

Netanyanu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, are accused of murder and forced starvation in Gaza following the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, the deadliest in that country’s history.

Israeli forces have killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, over 21,500 of them children, in Gaza since October 2023, while wounding over 173,500 others, according to Palestinian officials. More than 2 million other Gazans have been forcibly displaced—often multiple times—starved, or sickened by the US-backed war, which UN and other experts say is a genocide.

While numerous Global South nations—particularly members of the Hague Group—and US allies including Belgium, Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and Spain have publicly said they would enforce the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, other nations including France and Hungary have said they would not try to arrest the Israelis if they entered their territory.

Political expert Charlie Cook, the founder of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said Monday he thinks Democratic State Auditor Rob Sand will win Iowa’s gubernatorial election, but the U.S. Senate race between State Rep. Josh Turek and U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson may not be as competitive as Democrats might think.

Cook said Iowa is no longer considered a “swing” state and “hasn’t been for a long time,” adding that he does not believe Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat will flip due to hyperpolarization in modern politics.

“I’m a bit more skeptical in federal races because to me, if a Republican is disaffected this year, they’re a heck of a lot more likely to not show up or to skip over various offices on the ballot than they are to vote for a Democrat,” Cook said. “We’ll have to wait and see whether the Iowa Senate flips, but I’d give it probably a 1 in 4 chance.”

The Cook Political Report changed its rating of Iowa’s U.S. Senate race from “likely Republican” to “leans Republican” on June 3. Polls released in early July showed a tight race, with Turek leading a FOX News poll released July 2 by 4 percentage points and Hinson leading a July 1 New York Times/Siena poll by 2 points.

Cook participated Monday in a Zoom call with the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative where he discussed the national political landscape, saying the party of the president typically sees lower turnout during midterm elections.

“What typically happens is that people that either belong to, or lean towards a president’s party, sometimes they’re a little complacent,” Cook said. “Sometimes they’re a little disappointed. Sometimes they’re deeply disillusioned. Rarely are they fired up, energized, and so they just simply don’t turn out in midterm elections nearly the way they do in presidential years.”

Cook said Iowa is behaving “differently” in the 2026 election cycle compared to other states, opening the door for the governor’s seat and a couple of U.S. House races to flip to Democrats. Cook did not cite specific Iowa congressional districts he believes will flip.

“The governor’s race, I think it probably will flip,” Cook said. “There’s some House races that may skip over a little bit, but we’re not seeing as much of that in other states as we are in Iowa, and we’ll have to wait and see whether the Iowa Senate (seat) flips.”

Cook highlighted the importance of independent voters, a small number of people who often sway elections.

Cook said “ticket splitting,” voting for candidates in both parties, is rare nowadays, and independents will vote for one specific party “90 to 95% of the time.”

“Really, only 10% of all registered voters are really independents that vote,” Cook said. “They tend to be fickle. They tend to get buyer’s remorse. They tend to turn against a president on a moment’s notice, and stay that way, so they disproportionately break for the opposition party these days.”

Cook cited that Trump’s average disapproval rating hovers around 50%, while his approval across multiple polls sits at approximately 39 to 40%. Based on those numbers, Cook said he believes Republicans will lose seats in Congress.

Cook added that the party that controls the presidency has lost House and Senate seats in all but two midterm elections since World War II.

“Any polling data you look at, the energy level difference between Democrats and Republicans is huge this year, with Democrats hyper-motivated and Republicans not so much, and independents breaking very solidly against the president and Republicans as well,” Cook said. “This midterm seems to be shaping up exactly like the historic norm.”

Ranked-choice voting

Cook also discussed his displeasure with the current voting system in the U.S., citing Maine and Alaska as two states that have successfully implemented ranked-choice voting. Ranked-choice voting is an alternative voting system where if a candidate receives at least 50% of first-place votes, they win the election. If no candidate receives a majority, a series of instant run-off elections are held until a candidate receives 50%.

The purpose of ranked-choice voting is to fight against the United States’ two-party system by encouraging more third-party candidates, with the hope that Republicans and Democrats would look to appeal to a broader coalition.

“I think ranked choice is a good thing,” Cook said. “I think primaries where independents are allowed to vote in either party’s primary, I think that’s pretty healthy. Our system was designed by the founders, and it worked really well for 200 years, and for the last 50, it has not.”

Trump’s war with Iran has resumed (it never really stopped). The U.S. is sending more warplanes to the Middle East. Two American service members were killed in an Iranian missile attack on Jordan, and a third is missing. The Strait of Hormuz is again closed. Meanwhile, Mojtaba Khamenei issued his first statement following his father’s funeral, saying “revenge is the will of our nation” and that Iran would act against “criminals whose names are known.” In response, Trump threatened to “completely decimate and destroy” Iran if assassination threats against him were acted upon.

How long can Iran continue the war? Its economy appears reasonably stable; it has exported oil sufficient to meet its needs. Its population has become used to sanctions and economic pain, and has no voice, in any event. As shown by its attack on Jordan, as well as those on Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Syria, and Qatar, Iran has ample missile stocks and has also become more adept at evading U.S. air defense systems.

How long can the U.S. continue the war? America doesn’t have sufficient munitions to maintain the current bombing campaign indefinitely. World oil reserves are almost depleted, which means that continued blockage of the strait will cause even more economic pain. Oil has again topped $90 a barrel. Plus, there are midterm elections to think about.

So, what’s Trump’s likely next move? I’ve made the rounds of the foreign policy advisers and experts I consulted with in early March, asking what they believe Trump will do now.

Their responses are arrayed below. I’d appreciate hearing from you as well, about what you think Trump will do.

1. Continue the air strikes

Several believe the most likely scenario is for Trump to continue to rely on air strikes against Iran’s military, leadership, and infrastructure. The purpose of the strikes would be to further reduce Iran’s capacity to attack shipping targets, or at least obtain concessions at the bargaining table. The strikes would be aimed at Iran’s transportation infrastructure.

But Trump has pursued much of this strategy for months now. Iran hasn’t budged, and it has maintained its capacity to attack ships in the strait. This is also draining U.S. stockpiles of ammunition and leaving America unprepared for other conflicts around the world. It’s estimated that merely replacing the most crucial weapons expended in the Iran war so far will take at least three years of defense production.

Still, this strategy may be the least bad of several bad alternatives.

2. Make life in Iran impossible

A second scenario is for Trump to ramp up the bombing campaign to include attacks on Iran’s water infrastructure, such as dams and desalination plants — making life in Iran precarious and desperate.

But this could create a humanitarian catastrophe leading to mass deaths and a flood of refugees. It would also turn the world against the United States. In addition, Iran’s leaders have made clear that if the U.S. strikes the water infrastructure needed to keep their people alive, Iran will retaliate in kind against the Gulf States. It has already hit a water desalination plant in Kuwait. The U.S. would have difficulty defending Gulf States against this sort of attack.

Still, this strategy may be advocated by Trump’s most belligerent advisers, such as Pete Hegseth, who could convince Trump that it will show Iran and the world how tough and strong Trump and the U.S. are.

3. Launch a ground invasion

A third possibility is for the U.S. to invade Iran. This option can’t be ruled out, because Trump has mentioned it several times. Although highly risky, it’s the only option that could possibly achieve Trump’s stated objective of finding and destroying Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium. Trump may also believe that, with the lives of American ground troops at stake, the U.S. public will rally around him, perhaps even giving Republicans an advantage in the midterm elections.

But the U.S. lacks the manpower and logistical support to mount a successful land invasion of Iran. Even seizing tiny Kharg Island would be highly risky, given Iran’s strategic advantage over the strait. Trump also knows that if he loses more American troops, public opinion could swing more sharply against him and his war.

Still, an invasion can’t be ruled out.

4. Declare victory and go home

The final option is for Trump simply to give in to Iran’s demands, declare that he has solved the problem and gotten the best deal imaginable, and walk away. The ill-fated “memorandum of understanding” was a move in this direction.

But Iran interpreted that agreement as giving it control over the strait — and still claims control. Allowing Iran to command the strait would leave the U.S. far more economically vulnerable than it was before February 28, when the strait was open and Trump launched his war. It’s hard to see how Trump could accept this humiliating outcome.

Still, Trump could decide that this is the least damaging option and hope to sell it as a win, figuring he can get a plurality of Americans to believe anything he says.

Hence, today’s Office Hours question: What will Trump do in Iran NOW?

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/

President Donald Trump’s economy is so bad, it is reminiscent of the economy under the doomed Republican presidency of Herbert Hoover — at least, according to one of Trump’s former advisers.

“We have a few major problems going on in America today,” Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly worked as Trump’s communications director during his first term, posted on X on Monday. He continued that there is an “affordability crisis — prices up across the board,” that Trump broke his promise to end “forever wars” by immersing America “in a quagmire in Iran” and that he continues to cover up his involvement with the late child sex trafficker and his longtime friend, pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

“That’s why his approval rating is at 33 [percent],” Scaramucci added. “As low as Herbert Hoover at the depths of the Great Depression.”

This is not the first time Scaramucci has slammed Trump’s performance on the economy and his seeming focus on only helping the rich. In May, Scaramucci argued that “if Barack Obama had done half of what Trump is doing now, Fox News would have been calling for impeachment.”.

He added, “Trump has no economic philosophy. He spent $8.2 trillion in his first term and he's on pace for $9 to $10 trillion in this one. We're at 100 percent debt to GDP held by investors — 122 percent if you count the Fed's balance sheet. Ray Dalio will tell you those numbers put you in sovereign debt crisis territory. And when that happens, the only way politicians are willing to pay for it is through inflation. Which is the cruelest possible outcome, because inflation is the worst tax you can impose on lower and middle income people.”

Earlier in May, Scaramucci observed that his own Wall Street friends are concerned about Trump’s economy.

"Trump is too dangerous,” Scaramucci observed. “It’s funny, all my Wall Street buddies voted for him and now they’re regretting the fact," although he later clarified that "most of the people are.”

"I’m of the belief that prices are higher,” Scaramucci argued. “We have an oil crisis. He imposed illegal tariffs, which raised the pricing umbrella for all the lower-middle-income people that voted for him. He’s put us in a very vulnerable state as a country and an economy. If you want to make the case that the banks have record profits in the short term, sure — but he’s also suing some of the banking executives. You are losing the predictive capability of our justice system — what our civil rights are, what our free speech rights are. It’s very, very bad for business."

Speaking with this author for Salon in 2018, Scaramucci made the case that Trump won the 2016 presidential election because of concerns about the economy.

“What I saw was in a generation we went from aspirational working class families, like the one I grew up in, to [desperate] working class families,” Scaramucci told this journalist at the time. “What I saw is a decline in wages causing some level of economic asphyxiation for a very large group of people. And so Trump being out there, going into those areas, explaining the policies that he’s going to put in place, and then executing on some of those policies. I mean it’s not me saying, it’s just go look at ‘The Wall Street Journal.’”

In June President Donald Trump endorsed Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), a far right Republican and backer of Trump’s debunked Big Lie about the 2020 election, to oppose incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA).

Now, according to one political reporter, Trump’s pick is putting the key swing state of Georgia in peril for the GOP.

“Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Collins enters the general election facing a challenge that goes beyond winning over swing voters: convincing Republicans in Georgia and Washington that he can defeat Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff,” wrote the Atlanta Journal Constitution's Greg Bluestein on Monday. “The GOP nominee trails in early polls, faces a massive fundraising disadvantage and carries the sort of political baggage that his rivals long warned could doom him in November against a rising Democratic star.”

Bluestein elaborated that Collins must simultaneously broaden his appeal beyond the base of hardcore Trump supporters and convince donors that giving to his campaign is not a lost cause. So far he has succeeded in the second goal, as the Republican Party’s Senate super PAC the Senate Leadership Fund announced a $44 million investment in April in the winner’s campaign. Yet the first task has proved more elusive, and Ossoff has maintained a lead in the polls.

“A measure of despair is seeping in,” Bluestein reported. “Even U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, the race’s third-place finisher, acknowledged on SiriusXM that Collins was ‘way behind’ and warned that a poor showing could be a ‘drag at the top of the ticket.’” Although Rep. Carter later qualified his observation by pointing out that the race is still young, Bluestein pointed out that Trump’s political brand could prove to be a drag on the ticket.

“Ossoff decided early to cast the race as a referendum on Trump,” Bluestein reported. “But he is also taking the contest into deeply personal territory. Minutes after Collins clinched the nomination, Ossoff branded him a ‘notorious bigot, antisemite and extremist’ and released a video portraying him as a scandal-shadowed Trump lackey.”

In addition to these allegations, Collins has also been accused by the House Ethics Committee of misusing taxpayer funds so that his former top aide, Brandon Phillips, could engage in campaign work while drawing a government salary and arranged for his girlfriend to have a paid, no-show internship. Collins has denied the allegations.

In addition, after Collins fired Phillips, he hired a man named Kip Talley who became controversial after he promised to use “the levers of the legislative branch” to empower a Holocaust denier to be released from prison. Talley was also eventually let go, but that did not help Collins beat the suspicion of bigotry: His son-in-law was reported by CNN to have posted Nazi imagery, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and white nationalist propaganda on social media platforms.

And, of course, there remains Collins’ insistence that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, despite that claim being thoroughly debunked.

Polling expert Harry Enten observed in June that Collins is "starting to feel a whole lot like Herschel Walker 2.0," a reference to the football star-turned-politician who lost the 2022 Senate election because of his similar embrace of Trumpian conspiracy theories.

"Most Republicans, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, believe that the 2020 election was, in fact, stolen," Enten observed, noting that this view is not held by the general electorate.

"The Republican Party [is] all the way over on the right, and the rest of the American public is in the same camp, and the actual — this is the real world we're dealing with here," Enten explained.

Even conservatives have expressed reservations about Trump constantly harping about the 2020 election. Conservative podcaster Erick Erickson recently described Trump’s ongoing obsession with claiming the Georgia election was stolen as an “in-kind contribution to Ossoff’s campaign.”

Back in the early 20th Century, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) separated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS)—the Mormon Church — to protest its 1904 manifesto renouncing polygamy. The FLDS is a marginal group that the vast majority of Mormons, from former Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) to R&B star Gladys Knight, AKA The Empress of Soul, have zero connection to. But according to the Washington Post, the FLDS could endanger Rep. Andy Biggs' (R-Arizona) gubernatorial campaign in the Grand Canyon State.

Biggs is seeking the GOP nomination in Arizona's 2026 gubernatorial race. If he wins the nomination on Tuesday, he will take on Democratic incumbent Gov. Katie Hobbs in the general election. According to Washington Post reporter Hannah Knowles, however, a 2013 controversy involving the FLDS could come back to haunt the far-right Biggs.

"Momentum was growing in 2013 to crack down on a polygamist religious group accused of ... abusing girls in rural Arizona," Knowles reports in the Post. "The Justice Department was suing. The group's leader was in prison after a stint on the FBI's most-wanted list. Arizona's attorney general wanted to shut down the local police force, the Colorado City Marshal's Office, which he accused of doing the bidding of sect leaders. But a bill designed to strip authority from the marshal’s office never got a vote in the (Arizona) State Senate. "

Knowles continues, "Its Republican sponsor blamed then-Senate President Andy Biggs (R) for the bill's failure to advance in that chamber. Now, more than a decade later — as Biggs cruises toward an expected victory in Tuesday's primary for Arizona governor — the episode is likely to get renewed attention."

Democrats, Knowles reports, "expect to highlight the old fight over the marshal's office" — which, according to the Post reporter, is "one of many polarizing moments in Biggs' long legislative record that some Republicans worry could come back to haunt them in a hotly contested swing-state race."

One of those Republicans is Buster Johnson, a county supervisor in Arizona.

Johnson told the Post, "I would rather vote for somebody who has made a stand for women and children above religion."

Knowles notes that "scrutiny of" the FLDS "grew in the 2000s when officials charged its leader at the time, Warren Jeffs" with felonies and he was placed on the FBI's most-wanted list.

With smoke from Canadian wildfires leading to dangerous air quality in U.S. cities last week — from New York and Philadelphia to Chicago — MAGA Republicans pushed a new talking point: blaming Canada. But MS NOW columnist Jarvis DeBerry believes that the talking point could backfire badly.

The air quality in Philly was so problematic during the worst of the wildfires that trash collection was suspended for a few days. And Philadelphians, in news reports, were seen wearing protective masks on their way to work.

Trump, in a Friday, July 17 post on his Truth Social platform, wrote, "We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein, and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air, the quality of which is dangerous, and totally unacceptable! I will call the Prime Minister during the day to find out what they are going to do about it. The cost is incalculable! Canada has refused to engage in basic Forest Management and Debris Removal, knowing that such refusal will lead to exactly this result. This is Willful Negligence, and becoming a yearly occurrence, costing the United States Billions of Dollars, which cost of this pollution must of necessity be added to the TARIFFS Canada is currently paying. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP."

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), on X, posted, "I'll be introducing a bill next week to sanction Canada and the responsible Canadian government officials for this atrocity."

But DeBerry, in MS NOW, argues that the MAGA attacks on Canada are both cynical and misguided.

DeBerry, in response to Moreno's tweet, argues, "Slow down, senator. Atrocity? Let’s reserve that term for large-scale acts of wickedness, not disputes among neighbors regarding accusations of poor forest management."

In light of the Trump administration's environmental policies, DeBerry writes, MAGA attacks on Canada are "hypocritical."

"Now, all of a sudden, when smoke is wafting in from Canada, Trump says the pollution is costing the U.S. billions of dollars," DeBerry argues. "It is inconceivable that if the situation were reversed, and U.S.-created smoke was blanketing southern parts of Canada, Trump would consider the U.S. culpable. Ontario Premier Doug Ford, on Saturday, (July 18), pointed out that the U.S. indeed has a recent history of wildfires — there are multiple wildfires burning across the country now — and that Canada has responded with compassion, not condemnation. ... Not only is it gauche for the Trump administration to accuse Canada of poor forest management, it's also hypocritical."

DeBerry continues, "Multiple experts have complained that Trump's reckless Department of Government Efficiency initiative (which let go people who could be called into fight fires) and his equally thoughtless attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion (which have halted grants to states with policies deemed 'woke') have made Americans more vulnerable to out-of-control fires and the pollution they cause.

MAGA Republicans, DeBerry says, are "not interested in forest management or even in making it easier for Americans to breathe."

"They're only interested in saying something outrageous to fire up the base," the MS NOW columnist laments. "The burning eyes and the sooty smell are aggravating, but all these Republicans are doing is blowing smoke."

On Monday a former National Security Agency official issued a warning: President Donald Trump does not care about his public image because he plans on stealing the midterm elections.

“Everything he's doing suggests someone who doesn't care about public opinion,” Ben Rhodes, who served as Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications under President Barack Obama, told MS NOW’s Nicolle Wallace. “I mean, Nicolle, announcing essentially an insider trading scheme where hedge funds can buy access to Truth Social posts, really, so they can make money off of trades on Trump's war — I mean, it's a policy designed in a laboratory to be deconstructed by [Sen.] Jon Ossoff [D-GA] and motivate Democratic voters.”

Referring to Trump’s repeated claims that there is no affordability crisis in America, that he does not think about Americans’ financial situations and that claims of high prices are a “Democratic hoax,” Rhodes observed that “Trump's midterm election strategy is not to lower prices, is not to even talk about affordability. Trump told us his midterm election strategy last week: it's to steal the election. It's to say that there's a combination of foreign interference and domestic fraud. He'll try everything he can to disrupt voting itself. So we have to be worried about ICE agents or military even at polling sites, based on some trumped-up fake threat, based on some trumped-up fake threat. We have to worry about ballot boxes being seized before votes can be counted. We have to worry about Donald Trump saying, the minute the elections are over, that they were stolen.”

He added, “And this time around, he has a Justice Department led by, you know, Todd Blanche and Kash Patel, people who will go along with that and echo whatever he says. ... He's got a guy that's in line to be the director of national intelligence who won't even say that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.”

Rhodes concluded, “This is happening before our eyes. This is not a conspiracy theory. He gave a primetime address last week telling us that his midterm election strategy is to steal the midterm elections, not to contest them and win them for Republicans. And so I think, number one, we have to be calling that out and telling people what to expect so that they see it before it happens. Number two, we have to fortify state elections, right? The elections are still run by the states in this country, not the federal government, and we're going to need to be driving that principle home. Number three, I hope the Democrats win by a decisive enough margin that it just looks ridiculous and absurd for him to be contesting this at all. That matters, Nicolle."

Speaking with AlterNet in June, the Senior Policy Director for Voting and Fair Representation at the good government nonprofit Common Cause identified a number of signs that Trump plans on stealing the midterm elections. These included trying to restrict mail-in voting, threatening to send ICE and radical groups to polling locations, gerrymandering in a partisan way, purging eligible voters and pushing for voter ID laws.

“What they all add up to is a desire to avoid any accountability to the voters in the midterm elections — to ensure, to preordain the outcome of a midterm that he thinks is going to go badly for him,” Vicuña told AlterNet. “We know, from the Big Lie of the 2020 election to spurring on a violent revolt to overthrow a free and fair election, that he has no respect for democratic norms, for the voice of the people. This is entirely about his own power and his own ego. He will even invest in protecting that ego and protecting his power at the expense of the needs of the public. People are suffering with high gas prices and affordability issues, and he does not care. All that matters is protecting his power, and he has no interest in whether he does that through democratic means.”

He added, “I think this all adds up to a desire to ensure that his party stays in power and his ability to do what he wants — to attack vulnerable communities — remains intact.”

Vicuña continued that many of these efforts are also illegal.

“I think some of these attempts to federalize, to nationalize elections are clearly illegal,” Vicuña wrote. “You've seen some of that overreach already struck down — attempts to order independent agencies to force a strict voter ID requirement on people. That has been rejected. Common Cause is in court challenging the latest executive order to turn the United States Postal Service into some election administration agency and to create a further bureaucratic layer to make it more difficult to vote by mail.”

He concluded, “In terms of the president's authority to order around USPS, it's illegal. In terms of USPS's authority to become some sort of national election administration agency, it far exceeds the legal authority that Congress gave to the postal service. The statute describing what kind of work the postal service would do is about postal service work — processing mail and selling stamps. It has nothing to do with election administration.”

George F. Will, a conservative columnist and former adviser to Republican President Ronald Reagan, broke down in February how Trump’s loss in the 2020 election to Joe Biden is beyond reasonable doubt.

“Someone should read to him ‘Lost, Not Stolen,’ a 2022 report by eight conservatives (two former Republican senators, three former federal appellate judges, a former Republican solicitor general, and two Republican election law specialists),” Will wrote for The Washington Post. “They examined all 187 counts in the 64 court challenges filed in multiple states by Trump and his supporters. Twenty cases were dismissed before hearings on their merits, 14 were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before hearings. Of the 30 that reached hearings on the merits, Trump’s side prevailed in only one, Pennsylvania, involving far too few votes to change the state’s result.”

Will added, “Trump’s batting average? .016. In Arizona, the most exhaustively scrutinized state, a private firm selected by Trump’s advocates confirmed Trump’s loss, finding 99 additional Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump votes.”

President Donald Trump has suffered a number of legal defeats at the hands of judges, from having jurists reject his attempts to target political opponents to deeming his tariffs illegal. Now he has endured another setback at the courts, this time over his immigration policies and at the hands of a judge he appointed.

"JUST IN: A federal judge in Minnesota — Trump appointed chief judge Eric Tostrud — has rejected the administration's effort to force Minnesota to cooperate in enforcing federal immigration law," reported Politico's Kyle Cheney on Monday.

Trump's Justice Department sued the State of Minnesota, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Hennepin County and the county's sheriff by arguing that their implementation of "sanctuary" laws and policies that restrict local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement violates the Constitution's Supremacy Clause. Chief Judge Eric Tostrud, who was appointed by Trump himself, dismissed the government entire case.

Tostrud found that the government could not prove that it should be able to preempt the Minnesota Constitution because its fundamental demands were too speculative; their accusation of a service-of-process defect against Minneapolis was characterized as a harmless delay; and every other claim was dismissed on their merits. Perhaps most importantly, Tostrud concluded that the government's argument violated the Constitution's Tenth Amendment, which has an anti-commandeering doctrine that protects state sovereignty.

Tostrud’s decision cited ample legal precedent to reach its conclusion. On one occasion, it pointed out that “the Federal Government may not command the States' officers... to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program." On another occasion it noted that “[w]hen questions of federalism are involved, we must distinguish between expectations and requirements."

It also rejected Trump’s argument that the local governments have an obligation to help federal officials, quoting precedent that “[r]efusing to help is not the same as impeding” and that “[a]n ICE detainer is a 'request,' not an order, for another law enforcement agency [to] hold a particular alien."

If precedent continues, Trump will likely be furious at Tostrud for ruling against him, as he tends to believe that judges he appointed are supposed to do his bidding.

“He is completely livid over the mail-in ballot ruling,” senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes said in June when the Supreme Court ruled against Trump on the issue of mail-in voting. “And of course, part of this is about the justices who decided to rule against him in this case. Just a reminder — this was the Republican National Committee challenging a Mississippi law that allowed mail-in ballots that came in after Election Day to still be counted.”

Holmes added that “if you look at the justices who voted against Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee, one of them sticks out in particular, and that is Amy Coney Barrett — whom President Trump himself appointed to the bench. Trump has been growing increasingly frustrated. We've reported multiple times that behind closed doors he has slammed Amy Coney Barrett, saying that she has not stepped up and has not done basically what he put her in place to do.”