Democrats are in widespread agreement about something — that the DNC “autopsy” of the 2024 presidential election released yesterday is a mess. It’s full of typos and doesn’t explain anything. I tried skimming through the thing and decided it wasn’t worth it, since it seemed more interested in reviewing the last 20 years of politics than looking hard at 2024. It’s so bad some people are calling for DNC Chair Ken Martin to resign.

According to Politico, the only people who liked it are the bleeping centrists.

Prominent centrist groups that argue the party has drifted too far to the left found validation in the report.

“Ken Martin’s autopsy of the autopsy was excellent!” said Liam Kerr, co-founder of the centrist WelcomePAC. “After spending a decade accepting all edits from every progressive interest group, better to just delete all DNC strategy docs and admit we need to start from scratch. Admitting incompetence is much better than denial.”

Jonathan Cowan, president of center-left group Third Way, suggested the report was shelved because it would anger progressives. “I think it’s very clear why this report was buried, because as it says in the opening, it calls for Democrats to return to the vital center,” Cowan said. “Now I understand why a lot of very Twitter-friendly, super liberal DNC staff didn’t want this to come out.”

Naturally, this makes me hate the report I haven’t read even more.

As soon as the autopsy was released (or possibly leaked; it doesn’t seem to have been finished) I started seeing alerts that the word “Gaza” doesn’t appear in it anywhere. It also leaves out any mention of Joe Biden’s decision to run again, which led to the last-minute switch to Kamala Harris as the front runner.

Then the “Strength in Numbers” guy, G. Elliott Morris, wrote a post headlined The real reason Democrats lost in 2024 that is worth reading. After dismissing the autopsy as “a lot of pundit conventional wisdom” he wrote,

But the biggest problem is that the autopsy straight up ignores the major reasons Harris lost in 2024. Yes, it’s bad enough that the report doesn’t mention that party bosses failed to coordinate an early exit for Joe Biden, who was too unpopular to win. And there is no mention of Israel/Gaza, low turnout in the cities, and nothing on Harris’s race or gender. But this is a data-driven site, so I want to really focus in on what the numbers can tell us.

When we boot up the data, it’s obvious the main reason Harris lost — and the reason I am going to explore here, at this website, it being a data-driven website — is that 2024 simply had too much inflation-induced anti-incumbent sentiment for the incumbent party to overcome. This is curiously missing from its main diagnosis. The word “inflation” isn’t mentioned in the autopsy a single time (except in the context of inflation-adjusted ad spending).

He then presents a lot of data, with a chart I don’t entirely understand, that argues you could pretty much have predicted the last several presidential elections based on two factors. “Political scientists have been pointing out for decades that you can predict presidential elections reasonably well using just two pieces of information: how voters feel about the incumbent president, and how voters feel about the economy,” he wrote.

I confess I didn’t pick up on the discontent about the economy in 2024, since it seemed to be coming mostly from the Right. I’m not sure most Americans realized that the post-Covid inflation was a global phenomenon that Biden didn’t cause. And I knew that bringing down inflation isn’t easy, especially bringing down inflation without causing a recession. And Biden, with the help of the Federal Reserve board, was doing it masterfully. In October 2024 The Economist really did call the U.S. economy the envy of the world. But I guess not that many voters read The Economist. They weren’t seeing enough improvement fast enough, so they put Trump in charge.

And it’s also the case that I had no idea how frail Joe Biden had become until that June 2024 debate. But surely other people had seen it. To those who now say that Kamala Harris ran a bad campaign, G. Elliott Morris  writes that she actually did a bit better than the data predicted. “In a sense, then, the surprise of the election is that Harris did as well as she did, considering the prevailing factors against her,” Morris wrote. But it might be that by 2024 the die was cast.

Regarding Gaza, I have read that the the Muslim vote did tip Michigan to Trump, after several Muslim leaders foolishly endorsed Trump. I wonder what they think of those endorsements now. Whether Gaza made any real difference in any other state I do not know; possibly not.

I have noticed there is a subset of Democratic activists for whom Gaza is The Only Legitimate Issue, however.

I’m watching the primary campaigns in my congressional district, NY 17, for the House seat currently held by Republican Mike Lawler. There are three front-runners for the Democratic nomination, all women. I don’t have a sense that any one of these is the favorite. But the arguments for and against these candidates in social media boil down to “We have to vote for X because she’s the most electable, as the others are too far left” versus “We have to vote for Y because she’s the only one not taking money from pro-Israel groups.” What I’m not hearing is how any of these candidates stand on the economy and health care. Lawler made a lot of noise last year about how  he wasn’t going to vote to cut Medicaid and other safety net programs, and then he voted to cut Medicaid and the other programs. Hello? .

And as much as I hate what’s happening in Gaza, the Gaza purists are starting to annoy me as much as the centrism worshipers.

In other news:

Tulsi Gabbard is out as National Security Director. No big surprise. Reuters is reporting that she was pushed into resigning, but that story is behind a paywall.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia is in the news again. This is the Associated Press:

A federal judge on Friday dismissed a human smuggling case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, finding that the Justice Department’s pursuit of criminal charges was designed to punish him for challenging his mistaken deportation to El Salvador last year.

The ruling amounted to an extraordinary rebuke of a Justice Department that under President Donald Trump has repeatedly been accused of targeting defendants for political purposes. The Trump administration touted the charges against Abrego Garcia last year at a press conference in which then-Attorney General Pam Bondi declared, “This is what American justice looks like.”

“The evidence before this court sadly reflects an abuse of prosecuting power,” U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, in Nashville, Tenn., said in his ruling granting Abrego Garcia’s motion to dismiss for “selective or vindictive prosecution.” Without Abrego Garcia’s “successful lawsuit challenging his removal to El Salvador, the government would not have brought this prosecution.”

So will Trump’s DoJ leave the poor guy alone now? Or will it come up with some other bogus charge?

An interesting comment I heard yesterday from one of the teevee bobbleheads is that Trump is getting more and more of less and less. For example, Trump’s wackadoodle nominees have been taking out GOP incumbents Trump doesn’t like in the primaries. This shows us that the base, who care enough to vote in primaries, are still with him. More and more. In the meantime, his support among the general public is falling like a rock. Less and less.

In some places the wackadoodle nominees are not going to do as well in the general election. Add to this the gerrymandering that reduces Republican margins in previously safe GOP districts. This could result in a massive backfire. And if Trump’s endorsement of Ken Paxton helps Paxton win the Senate runoff next week against incumbent John Cornyn, this could make a Dem flip a tad closer to reality.

And I don’t see Trump getting any more popular in the next six months.

See David Graham at The Atlantic, The Price of Trump’s Primary Wins.

Trump’s hold on the MAGA base is still powerful, but the same actions that help him maintain it also help erode his standing with the broader public—and threaten to lead Republicans to defeat in November’s midterm elections.

Primary voters—and especially primary voters in Indiana, Louisiana, and Kentucky—are not representative of the general electorate. (Trump won those states by 19, 22, and 31 points, respectively, in 2024.) They aren’t even necessarily representative of the Republicans who vote in the general election, a group that is likely to be less engaged, less ideological, and less politically extreme overall. As a result, votes in November are more likely to hinge on issues such as inflation or the Iran war.

Graham goes on to say that, at the moment, Republicans facing re-election are more likely to want to not cross Trump than to stand up to him. But one of these days that could change. And, ironically, Trump’s desire for personal glory would have been better served by a more adversarial Congress that kept his worse impulses in line.

Speaking of which, it’s a bit too soon to see public reaction to Trump’s new slush fund reflected in the polls. But see Trump approval sinks to record low among Republicans in stunning Fox News poll at The Independent.

The survey, conducted by the Trump-friendly conservative news network, found a seven-point rise in the number of self-identified GOP voters who now say they disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, with just 36 percent of non-MAGA GOP respondents saying they approve of his economic record compared with 74 percent of MAGA Republicans who say they approve.

But the supermajority of MAGA voters who still back his handling of the economy still wasn’t enough to keep his approval rating on the issue from plummeting to just 29 percent — a full 5 percent lower than what the same poll recorded a month ago.

This trend is likely to continue, and the way Trump has been behaving I don’t think he’s capable of turning it around.

I’m reading the slush fund will be really hard to stop. Several lawsuits have been filed, but this Reuters article explains why, for legal/technical reasons, it will be hard for them to succeed. On the other hand, Greg Sargent writes that some Republicans in Congress are opposing the slush fund. Probably not enough, but some. However, even if it’s reversed eventually, the $1.8 billion may have been dispersed by then.

Of all of Trump’s many corruptions, among the most brazen is his suit against the IRS claiming personal damages because an IRS contractor leaked his tax returns during his first term. This amounts to Trump just reaching into the Treasury and helping himself to the People’s money, because he can. And considering that presidents since Richard Nixon have made their current tax returns public, it seems to me that claiming he was “damaged” by the leak amounts to an admission of guilt, that there is something in the returns that would damage him if it became public. But let’s go on.

The original claim was for $10 billion. Then late last week ABC News reported that Trump had decided to settle with Trump for $1.7 billion — $1,776,000,000 to be exact. And this money wouldn’t go into Trump’s pocket, according to Trump. Trump’s Justice Department would set up a slush fund managed by Trump appointees who can be fired by him at will, and this slush fund would be used to pay off people Trump wants to reward for doing him favors. In particular, he wants to be able to compensate people who face legal consequences for breaking the law in his behalf. Or, as David Kurtz puts it, “to pay out ‘damages’ to his allies who purport to be victims of the Deep State, including the Trump-pardoned Jan. 6 defendants.” This is just the thing to possibly compensate a volunteer paramilitary of Brownshirts set on bullying whomever Trump wants bullied.

I also like the way the New York Times puts it:

The Justice Department said that it had created a $1.8 billion fund that could compensate supporters of President Trump who contend they were mistreated by Democratic administrations. The announcement came as part of a settlement with President Trump of his $10 billion lawsuit against the I.R.S.

The new “settlement” was filed in advance of a court deadline. The judge hearing the original suit wanted the “defendants” to explain how they are not just an extension of Trump. No responses had been filed yet. And here’s a twist that I just learned about this morning, Again, David Kurtz at TPM:

Trump’s latest filing is a notice of dismissal with prejudice, meaning the case cannot be refiled, but most importantly it contends that the right to dismiss the case is not subject to judicial review under the procedural rules since neither the IRS nor the Treasury Department had yet filed an answer or other responsive motion to the lawsuit.

“Accordingly, voluntary dismissal under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) is available as of right, and requires neither leave of Court nor the consent of any party,” Trump’s lawyers argue. They go farther in a footnote, in telling the judge that they are filing a notice of dismissal, not a motion to dismiss, because she has no say in the matter under appeal court precedent: “dismissal is self-executing, terminates the action upon filing, and divests the district court of jurisdiction.”

The bulk of the notice is dedicated to telling Judge Williams to back off: “Upon the filing of this Notice, no judicial analysis is appropriate, and any ‘subsequent order purporting to dismiss ‘all claims’ . . . [would be] a nullity,’” it contends, citing case law.

I wondered last week if a court would have to sign off on Trump’s settlement with Trump, and I couldn’t find an answer. So the answer seems to be, I guess not.

And today the DoJ announced the establishment of the “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

Yet this isn’t over. Today House Democrats filed an amicus brief with the original judge, asking her to put a stop to this blatant exercise in self-dealing. Rep. Jamie Raskin has been arguing that the creation of the slush fund is unconstitutional, since only Congress can appropriate funds to be used by government (in this case, the DoJ). So there may be a court challenge after all, although who knows how that will turn out.

And if you (like me) are struggling to remember what was learned from Trump’s tax returns, see Key takeaways from six years of Donald Trump’s federal tax returns from CNN and 18 Revelations From a Trove of Trump Tax Records from the New York Times.

Trump has been back from China for several hours now, and as near as anyone can tell he came back empty-handed. He claimed he had made some trade deals, but so far these claims have been unconfirmed by China. Maybe the Chinese will be buying soybeans and Boeing jets, and maybe they won’t.

See Franklin Foer, Xi Jinping Was Only Humoring Trump. It begins,

Spare a moment, please, for the lame-duck superpower. It calls itself the leader of the free world, but the free world no longer believes it. When it extends its hand, nobody rushes to accept. When it threatens, nobody trembles.

Foer’s piece argues that Trump, the lame-duck president, is turning the U.S. into a lame-duck superpower.

After President Trump arrived in Beijing this week, Xi Jinping showered him with pomp befitting a summit of great powers. Yet the Chinese leader permitted potshots at his guest to go viral on his country’s internet rather than suppressing them, as some observers expected he would during a state visit. Xi answered Trump’s lavish praise by sternly lecturing him about meddling with Taiwan. In the end, Xi offered nothing of great substance—no solutions to the war in Iran, no sweeping trade deals, no promises of access to rare earth minerals. Xi used the visit to humor the lame-duck president, waiting for his time to pass.

Xi believe the U.S. is in a decline from which it will not recover.

During the first Trump administration, foreign leaders flattered and accommodated the president out of deference to American power. They feared it; they relied on it. During the second administration, and especially since the beginning of the Iran war, their calculus has quietly shifted—not because the strategy of obsequiousness has failed, but because it’s no longer worth the trouble. Like many of his counterparts around the world, Xi has begun to assume that it’s not just Trump who is term-limited; it’s also his nation.

Trump’s war in Iran was meant to showcase American power. It did the opposite. In the course of failing to remove a much weaker regime or eliminate its nuclear threat, the United States blew through its arsenal—so much so that allies in the Pacific reasonably wonder whether enough munitions remain to protect them. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon is now worried that it lacks the firepower to execute contingency plans for defending Taiwan.

Trump really is running the U.S. the way he ran his businesses. He was a terrible businessman also. But Trump’s biggest problem is that he can’t bully the whole world. Nobody is afraid of him any more. And Trump’s folly in Iran has shown the world our military limitations, which are becoming more limited by the hour. Both China and Iran, Foer says, are not interested in cutting deals; they are just waiting us out.  It’s a bleak assessment, but I can’t say he’s wrong.

Regarding Taiwan, do keep in mind that Taiwan has a near-monopoly on the production of the advanced semiconductor chips that are essential to pretty much all the technology you can think of. If this production capacity fell into China’s hands, this could create a situation worse than what’s going on in the strait of Hormuz.

Trump has complained that Taiwan “stole” the U.S. semiconductor industry, but that’s not true. What happened, as much as I understand it, is that beginning in the 1970s Taiwan invested considerable money and resources into developing ways to mass produce chips precisely and efficiently. They don’t design the chips themselves but produce chips for other companies. It’s less expensive for other companies around the world to have Taiwan make their chips than to make the chips themselves.  The Taiwanese didn’t “steal” anything. They did something very smart that paid off for them.

Several months ago Congress approved the sale of $14 billion in arms, including missiles, air-defense systems, and anti-drone equipment, to Taiwan. This has been waiting for Trump’s sign off. Now Trump is saying he’s withholding approval in order to use the arms sale as leverage to force China to make a deal. It doesn’t seem to be working. Chris Buckley in the New York Times:

Taiwan’s government has been waiting for months for Mr. Trump to sign off on a $14 billion package of missiles, anti-drone equipment and air-defense systems intended to fortify the island against Beijing’s military threats.

Mr. Trump himself had pressured Taiwan to spend more on its own defense. Now he is using the very arms his administration had pushed the island to buy as leverage with China, the United States’ main adversary.

Mr. Trump told reporters on Air Force One after leaving China on Friday that he had discussed the weapons package with China’s president, Xi Jinping, during their summit this past week in Beijing. He was asked in an interview with Fox News whether he would approve the Taiwan deal.

“No, I’m holding that in abeyance and it depends on China,” he said in the interview, which was recorded in Beijing but aired after he left. “It depends.”

“It’s a very good negotiating chip for us, frankly,” he said. “It’s a lot of weapons.”

He did not go into details about what he wanted in return, but Mr. Trump has pushed China to make major purchases of American airplanes, ethanol, soybeans, beef and sorghum.

It’s not working, dumbass. Just sign off on the sale. Assuming we still have the weapons to sell and haven’t burned them out in Iran already.

If I could draw, I would draw a cartoon showing Trump as a Chinese peasant kowtowing to Emperor Xi Jinping. The usually imperious Trump appears to be playing the role of eager supplicant in China. And I can’t believe I’m agreeing with Bill Kristol:

In the Great Hall, Xi greeted the American president politely but professionally, calling on the United States and China to be “partners, not adversaries.”

Trump responded much more personally. “I have such respect for China, the job you’ve done. You’re a great leader. I say it to everybody, you’re a great leader. Sometimes people don’t like me saying it, but I say it anyway because it’s true.” Trump also liked the ranks of Chinese children the state assembled to greet him with forced enthusiasm, telling Xi: “I was particularly impressed by those children. They were happy, they were beautiful. Those children were amazing.”

It’s a kowtow, twenty-first century style.

Xi has warmed Trump about Taiwan being “handled poorly” could lead to a dangerous situation.  WaPo:

“The Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-U. S. relations,” Xi said, according to the Foreign Ministry readout. “If it is handled properly, the bilateral relationship will enjoy overall stability. Otherwise, the two countries will have clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy.”

In the meeting, Trump did not respond to Xi’s comments about Taiwan and moved on to the next topic without acknowledging them at all, according to a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive closed-door meeting.

Per Business Insider, here is the complete list of people accompanying Trump in China.

• Apple CEO Tim Cook
• BlackRock CEO Larry Fink
• Blackstone CEO and co-founder Stephen Schwarzman
• Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg
• Cargill CEO Brian Sikes
• Citi CEO Jane Fraser
• Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins
• Coherent CEO Jim Anderson
• GE Aerospace CEO H Lawrence Culp
• Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon
• Illumina CEO Jacob Thaysen
• Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach
• Meta president and vice chairman Dina Powell McCormick
• Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra
• Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon
• Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk
• Visa CEO Ryan McInerney

Also Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, who was not on the official list but is joining according to a Truth Social post. Even better, Eric Trump — who is running the Trump family business now — is there also,  “The Trump Organization has said Eric Trump is traveling to China only to support his father, and there is no indication he will pursue business while there,” says the New York Times. Sure.

The Times article says Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tagged along also. Why is Hegseth there? That’s very weird.

And I don’t entirely understand what these people expect to accomplish in China that relates to, you know, the United States.  One might think that all these people going to China could be looking for business opportunities for themselves. Considering that China is providing critical economic and technological support to Iran to help Iran survive Trump’s war — mostly buying Iran’s oil and helping them make missiles — it seems a bit surreal for Trump to be undertaking a friendly diplomatic visit to China now. And Trump has been so addled lately there is genuine concern that any deal he might make with Xi Jinping would involve a promise not to interfere if Xi invades Taiwan. 

At this point, everything about the Trump 2.0 Administration has failed; it’s all a shambles. The tariffs have been a disaster. Inflation is up more now than it was when Trump took office. the Iran War is turning out to be an even bigger mistake than Dubya’s invasion of Iraq, if that’s possible. And Trump himself exhibits little interest in fixing any of it. He has mentally retreated into his pet projects like the ballroom. Trump may have invited all these people along to China just so he doesn’t have to deal with anything himself.

And do see Paul Krugman, The Apotheosis of Willful Ignorance.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup begins one month from today. And right now it’s shaping up to be one of the greatest busts of all time. Over a million tickets to games are still available. And the hotels that had expected a windfall are not seeing it yet. It looks like a whole lot of soccer fans have decided to sit this one out.

I spent yesterday in New York City with my children and grandchildren. My son and daughter-in-law have jobs that tie into tourism and events, including sports events. Tourism is way down; people aren’t traveling. I take it people are backing off of plane travel lately. And hotels are not getting the reservations for the FIFA games they expected, including for the final match on July 19. Some companies had hoped to cash in by reserving blocks of luxury hotel rooms and arranging special amenities, like hospitality suites, for the deep-pocket ticket holders. Now those companies are trying to get out of their contracts with the hotels because not enough people are buying their packages.

Part of the problem is FIFA, which way overpriced the tickets. I’m reading lots of North American soccer fans who were really exited about going bailed out when they learned that even a nosebleed seat would set them back a few hundred dollars. One fellow found that even with the cheapest tickets, taking his whole family of four children to a game would have cost him $1,600. Taking his whole family to the U.S. opening game would have cost him $6,700, minimum. Category 1 tickets are being offered for as high as $32,970. It’s also being said that FIFA’s seating categories are hard to understand, so that ticket buyers may be confused about what seats they are buying.

Soccer fans also have been frustrated by the way the tickets have been sold. I understand that for a time you couldn’t just buy tickets. You had to enter a lottery for a chance at winning a time slot to buy a ticket. It appears FIFA has been deliberately making tickets hard to get — creating artificial scarcity — to justify the prices. See World Cup ticket prices for ‘Dallas Stadium’ games top $1,000 as FIFA accused of creating artificial scarcity, dated just two days ago. But see also World Cup ticket resale prices are falling, including for USA opener vs. Paraguay.  There could very well be a ticket fire sale at the last minute to fill up seats. FIFA insists that ticket sales have been great, of course.

And then there’s the Trump factor. CNN did a story last month about soccer super-fans overseas who go to every World Cup but are boycotting this one. All the news stories about ICE have them spooked. CNN interviewed a German super-fan who has traveled to every World Cup since 2006. He said he always felt safe in every country. But this guy is half Korean and is afraid of ICE.

“You see the ICE people going around and just pulling people from the streets just because they look foreign and you don’t get the feeling that anybody would protect me, you know?” he says.

CNN also reports that lots of people overseas have been organizing boycotts, although only of the games to be held in the U.S.A. And this is mostly about disgust with Trump. Some overseas soccer fans have vowed to not even watch on television. And “Trump’s travel ban on 39 countries — mostly non-White, African or Muslim-majority countries — also excludes huge groups of international soccer fans.”

When FIFA awarded Trump its bogus peace prize last year, it may have assumed this would help fire up enthusiasm for their games. But are MAGAts soccer fans? The hard core, probably not. Soccer is still a game for foreigners to them. Latinos do tend to be soccer fans, but they may fear that ICE is going to be deployed around the stadiums waiting to snatch people away.

Between now and the first game it may be that most of the seats will fill up, but right now the 2026 World Cup is looking like a massive fail.

Chris Hayes gives a retrospective account of Trump’s war dispatches from Mars. You’ll want to watch this.

The big news today is that the Virginia Supreme Court surprised everybody and threw out the redistricting referendum of a few days ago. So no redistricting in Virginia after all. All the pundits are saying this is going to make it harder for Dems to take back the House. I am not a math whiz, but I don’t think taking back the House is out of reach. It’s so close now, and I am skeptical all the redrawing is going to work in the GOP’s favor as they believe it will. Also there is talk from Albany about New York redistricting, but there is very little time left now so I don’t know how they’re going to pull it off.

And to catch up on the mess going on in Tennessee, just read Evan Hurst at Wonkette. The state legislator seems determine to bring back Jim Crow in all its non-glory. So much for the alleged post-racist society.

I believe I’ve said earlier that we haven’t hit bottom yet with Trump and MAGA. And I don’t think we have, but that doesn’t mean the way down isn’t very painful and upsetting.

Going back to Trump and Iran, do see Trump Is ‘Bored’ With the War He Started by Jonathan Lemire at The Atlantic. He thought it would be an easy win, and now that it’s dragging on he’s just plain lost interest.

Trump never thought it would turn out like this. After the impressive military operation to snatch Nicolás Maduro from Caracas, the president set his eyes on Iran, telling confidants that it would “be another Venezuela,” a pair of outside advisers told me. They, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy. Trump believed that the U.S. military was unstoppable, and that he had a chance to topple Tehran’s theocracy, a prize that had eluded his predecessors. He was redrawing the world’s maps and expected a victory to come in days, a week or two at most. 

Not exactly how it’s turned out.

Patience is not Trump’s strength. One outside adviser, who speaks with him regularly, told me the president is “bored” with the war.

Chris Hayes also said something about Trump being bored last night. In some of those photos where he appears to be asleep in the Oval Office he might just be bored. He wants to talk about his ballroom and other desecrations of the White House and grounds and National Mall, because that’s a comfortable subject for him. The presidenting thing is frustrating and confusing him, obviously.

Trump always assumes complex issues or projects are simpler than they are. Trump doesn’t like to confer with people; he wants to act unilaterally. And if events aren’t giving him instant gratification, he gets bored. It’s widely reported he’s looking for some “magic bullet” that will allow him to leave Iran while calling it a win, because he must realize it’s making him look bad. But he’s not able to do the real work of understanding the issues and working with others to mitigate the damage. He wants a gimmick that will give him a quick fix. Trump in a nutshell.

I saw a meme the other day that said “The aim of the war is no longer regime change. The aim of the war is now to convince people it wasn’t a mistake in the first place.” Yes, and that’s been the only true aim since about the day after Trump and Netanyahu started the bleeping war.

Sunday Trump announced that our naval assets were going to be used to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz. On Monday it was claimed two U.S. flagged ships and a Danish ship made it through the Strait. I was not happy about U.S. naval personnel risking their lives to save Trump’s political ass.

But then Tuesday Trump announced the project was being “paused.” “Trump, in a Truth Social post, said the decision was based in part on ‘the fact that Great Progress has been made toward a Complete and Final Agreement’ with Iran,” CNBC reported. CNBC continued,

Project Freedom “will be paused for a short period of time to see whether or not the Agreement can be finalized and signed,” Trump wrote.

Stock futures rose following Trump’s announcement, which raised hopes for a peace agreement that would end the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran and reopen the economically vital strait.

It also represented a surprising about-face from the Trump administration, which just hours earlier had framed Project Freedom as a matter of life or death for thousands of civilian sailors.

The Trump administration has said that nearly 23,000 sailors on vessels representing 87 countries have been stranded in the Persian Gulf because of Iran’s de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Today we’re learning that Trump was forced to shut down the plan after Saudi Arabia suspended the U.S. military’s ability to use its bases and airspace to carry out the operation. Trump, in true Trump style, didn’t bother to confer with allies whose cooperation he would need before going ahead with the project. The Sunday announcement caught the Gulf States off guard. By all accounts Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was massively pissed off about it. MBS barred the U.S. military from using Saudi air space and also from using Prince Sultan Airbase, which our planes previously had been using. I understand that today the U.S. is allowed *some* use of Saudi air space but still is blocked from Prince Sultan Airbase.

Maybe Trump should have asked first. Today the White House is claiming that allies were “notified,” but since the Gulf States were all clearly caught off guard, maybe the emails all went into “spam.”

But I liked the part about how stock futures rose after Trump announced new talks that may or may not be happening. According to several news outlets, stocks surged to new highs when Trump announced the project was paused. And as in previous such shifts, there is a strong appearance that somebody was engaged in insider trading.

So are there talks going on, or not? I don’t think so. You might remember that Trump stopped Kushner and Witkoff from going back to Pakistan for more talks a couple of weeks ago. This was hardly tragic, as sending those two clowns to negotiate is worse than sending nobody. But as near as I can determine no formal talks are taking place. Some news stories indicate there may be some backchannel communication going on. Whether this communication rises to a level above “yeah, you stink worse” I do not know.

News stories say that the U.S. is waiting for a response from Iran on an American proposal to end the war. Iranian officials said yesterday that they were reviewing the proposal and would respond through Pakistan, not directly to the U.S. Trump keeps saying the Iranians are desperate to negotiate, while the Iranians seem a whole lot less desperate than Trump.

Do see U.S. intelligence says Iran can outlast Trump’s Hormuz blockade for months at the Washington Post. Also at the Washington Post, see Iran has hit far more U.S. military assets than reported, satellite images show.

What is in this proposal? It’s a one-page memo, which means it’s probably short on detail. Axios:

The White House believes it’s getting close to an agreement with Iran on a one-page memorandum of understanding to end the war and set a framework for more detailed nuclear negotiations, according to two U.S. officials and two other sources briefed on the issue.

The big picture: The U.S. expects Iranian responses on several key points in the next 48 hours. Nothing has been agreed yet, but the sources said this was the closest the parties had been to an agreement since the war began.

Among other provisions, the deal would involve Iran committing to a moratorium on nuclear enrichment, the U.S. agreeing to lift its sanctions and release billions in frozen Iranian funds, and both sides lifting restrictions around transit through the Strait of Hormuz.

Many of the terms laid out in the memo would be contingent on a final agreement being reached, leaving the possibility of renewed war or an extended limbo in which the hot war has stopped but nothing is truly resolved.

So it’s all very provisional. Regarding the 48 hours, this Axios story was published yesterday.

Trump has also been promising that gas prices will fall very quickly once the war that he has declared over several times already actually is over. But nobody who knows anything about petroleum markets is saying that. They’re saying gas will stay high for months no matter what happens.

And I believe that catches us up on the status of Trump’s war.

Paul Krugman wrote a must-read piece for his substack site titled Maga Will Kill Many Americans. He begins with some of the nonsense currently coming out of the DHS Department as run by RFK the Lesser. But he goes on to document that there is a very clear correlation between right-wing politics and lower life expectancy. People die a lot sooner in Red states than Blue ones. And I believe I previously mentioned that during the latter days of the Covid pandemic the hospitalization and death rates were significantly higher in counties that voted for Trump in 2020 than in counties that voted for Biden. Biden people were more likely to get vaccinated and wear masks. Imagine.

But even in Blue states we don’t seem to be keeping up with other industrialized nations, health-wise. “Most Americans appear to be unaware of the fact that life expectancy in the United States is substantially lower than in other advanced countries; we’re on a par with poorer nations in Europe like Albania,” Krugman writes. He doesn’t mention that for worse outcomes we’re still spending far and away more per capita on health care than any other nation on the planet. Hmmm. Well, don’t get me started.

But right on cue, here’s another news story from ProPublica about increasing numbers of new parents who are refusing to allow their newborns to receive a standard vitamin K shot. And some babies have died as a result. A bleeping vitamin K shot. It’s not even a vaccine or some kind of newfangled pharmaceutical invention. It’s vitamin K. We all have some in our bodies. It occurs naturally in food, especially in the dark green leafy things like spinach and kale  But it’s kind of hard to get a newborn to eat spinach or kale.

I take it some babies are born with a K deficiency that makes them susceptible to hemorrhaging easily. One of the things K does for us is help our blood to clot. A shot at birth has been a standard preventative measure for some time. But that makes it suspect to some people.

A lot of the anti-medical science culture in the U.S. is being fueled by people pushing “alternative” cures. Krugman:

The role of greed in the anti-vaccine movement may be less obvious, but the fact is that quack medicine is big business. Right-wing radio and social media have long relied on peddlers of snake oil for a large part of their revenue. So much of the attack on medical science can be seen as financially motivated.

Which is not to discount the role of willful ignorance driven by ideology. The modern U.S. right is, to a large extent, an alliance between oligarchs and white Christian nationalists — and the latter are deeply hostile to Enlightenment values, modern science very much included.

Anti-intellectualism goes back a long way in American history, long before there was MAGA. See Richard Hofstadter, for example.  But now it’s being allowed to craft our health care policies. So stay well.