Blaming the Iran War is poised to become this cycle’s overly simplistic post-election narrative device. It offends almost no one, absolves the rest of the Trump II depredations, and misses its own anti-democratic origins.

We’re at risk of having the blue wave chalked up merely to the pocketbook impacts of the Iran War and the Trump tariffs without connecting either of them to the underlying authoritarianism involved.

The Iran War and the Trump tariffs, many of which (though not all) were struck down by the Supreme Court, were unilateral and illegal acts by the executive branch.

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The notion that Republicans were victimized by Trump’s political “missteps” and “miscalculations” necessarily supposes that his rogue anti-democratic presidency is somehow disconnected from the horrible outcomes it produces. It also unwittingly implies that if the outcomes had been good, the means would have been fine.

Why It Matters

No Escaping the Numbers. Looking past the usual spin, the fiscal data for the US government is on an unsustainable course, and this is contributing to upward creep in bond yields in the United States and across the developed world. On Friday, the Treasury confirmed that the deficit for fiscal year 2026 was approaching $2 trillion, up from $1.78 trillion in 2025, which represents an increase of approximately 12% and the third highest on record behind the COVID years. With annual interest payments rising in tow, the only escape is growth, cost-cutting, or a combination of both. Absent that, the laws of economics will inevitably reassert themselves.

Dismantling the House that Washington Built. The more remarkable takeaway is how little regard the US administration shows toward a pillar of a global economic system that it both built and continues to benefit from. In branding the IMF’s concerns illegitimate and opting out of its deliberations, the Fund is left increasingly compromised for when it needs to impose unpopular reforms on other states. The Treasury statement is unabashedly a narrative crafted for domestic political gain, one that sacrifices more diffuse and systemic levers of US power. This is definitely a trend across the Trump administration’s foreign policy posture.

Your phone buzzes with a frantic text message. “DEMOCRACY IS ON THE LINE.” It’s not the first time you’ve gotten a fundraising text like this from the Democratic Party and its candidates. Nor the first time you’ve rolled your eyes. But the ask makes sense. Democracy really is on the line. You have asked yourself what you would have done if you had lived under the authoritarian regimes of the past, and volunteering some time and money seems like the least you could do. You click the ActBlue link and donate $100. The country must be saved, after all.

You, the ordinary American, are expected to step up. But are the party insiders stepping up as well? At the very same moment your $100 clears, the party leadership and strategists are at a donor retreat you were not invited to, walking a few dozen people who write seven-figure checks through the polling and the proprietary model that will set the party’s priorities for the cycle. You have a general sense that this is how the game is played, that winning elections requires money from big and small donors. You’re skeptical of the House and Senate leadership, who are increasingly unpopular with the base. But overall, you see a party apparatus that wants to win and oust the Republican Party from control of government, and you assume both tracks feed that goal.

We’re here to tell you that this view is wrong. The Democratic Party is being devoured by an ecosystem of consultants. Mostly out of view of the party’s voters and activists, political consultants are paid to raise the money, place the ads, and set the strategy. And they’re paid regardless of whether the party wins or loses.

The Trump administration has once again all but erased trans**gender people from reports about sexual violence in prisons and jails across the country — except to report data about trans people as perpetrators of violence. The same reports mention transgender victims behind labels such as “other.”

The two Bureau of Justice Statistics reports, based on the results of the anonymous National Inmate Survey conducted in 2023 and 2024, that were released last week, glaringly obscure data about trans people as victims of violence behind bars.