Get ready for a growing drumbeat for Trump leaving office as a result of his disastrous Iran War settlement. What do the foreign policy experts see ahead for the U.S. as long as he stays? At Foreign Policy, Ian Bremmer and Firas Maksad make the case that “The Long Shadow of the Iran War: Trump’s Most Consequential Foreign Policy Mistake” in. Foreign Affairs. An excerpt: “After nearly four months of fighting, concerns over Iran’s nuclear program, ballistic missile arsenal, and support for proxies across the Middle East remain largely unresolved. The regime that Trump set out to change is still standing, and it may now be set to receive economic relief in exchange for restoring free passage in a strait that was open before the war began. Iran has emerged from the conflict battered but in a stronger strategic position, with its regime and its ability to threaten the region intact. This outcome, after months of destruction and global economic disruption, is the greatest foreign policy failure of both of Trump’s terms. And the consequences of that failure will persist long after the war ends, making the United States’ growing strategic challenge in the Middle East even more difficult to address…The most likely outcome of this war is a more polarized and fragmented Middle East in which existing multilateral institutions weaken, rival coalitions harden, and outside powers compete for influence…Governments across the world are already acting on a shared diagnosis: the United States is no longer reliable, and reducing long-term dependence on Washington has become a strategic imperative. More here.
Just when you thought that Trump couldn’t say anything more damaging to his party’s prospects in November, Alex Woodward reports “Trump threatens to pull unemployment benefits from all states for the first time in history” at The Independent:”Donald Trump’s administration is threatening to withdraw federal funding for unemployment assistance in all 50 states as part of the president’s nationwide campaign against “fraud” in government spending.…In a letter to the governors of 53 states and territories, acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling warned that the federal government would use “every available tool” to combat “waste, fraud and abuse” within state-run unemployment insurance programs, including “withholding administrative funds from states” for the first time in history….There is no single national program for unemployment support, though the federal government partners with state agencies to support temporary financial assistance to out-of-work Americans. Nearly 2 million people are currently receiving those benefits, while roughly 229,000 people are filing initial jobless claims every week, according to the Labor Department.…But most unemployed Americans face bureaucratic hurdles to receive those benefits. Most states provide roughly six months of payments to qualified Americans. Those programs are typically covered by individual states through state unemployment taxes paid by employers, but the federal government provides support for administrative costs…Without that support, the loss in funding could force state-run systems to shut down…”We are officially putting governors on notice,” Sonderling said in a statement Wednesday.” More here.
Robert Kuttner’s “Trump Goes Postal” shares the following revelations at The American Prospect: “The U.S. Postal Service has proposed a rule to block delivery of mail ballots in states that have not complied with an executive order President Trump signed in March directing the USPS to halt election mail unless states hand over voter lists. One part of Trump’s March order directed the Postal Service to issue just such a rule. Several pending lawsuits contend that both orders amount to an illegal executive branch seizure of election administration that the Constitution reserves to the states…About 30 percent of all ballots are now cast by mail. The Postal Service is a potential choke point. The NAACP on June 3 filed a motion in federal court seeking to block the Postal Service’s proposed regulation. The NAACP points out that the proposed regulation violates a 2021 settlement agreement that requires timely delivery of election mail to all voters…The Justice Department has demanded that at least 48 states turn over voter files, as specified by Trump’s March executive order, and has threatened state officials who refuse with criminal prosecution. The DOJ has sued Washington, D.C., and 30 states for refusing to provide their statewide voter registration lists with driver’s license and Social Security numbers. But every case that has come before a judge—eight so far—has been dismissed…The more serious problem is that several red states are cooperating with Trump voluntarily. According to the Brennan Center’s tally, which is regularly updated, at least 16 states have either provided, or committed to provide, their voter registration lists, including driver’s license and Social Security numbers: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming…we can expect continuing trench warfare between defenders of the right to vote and the serial efforts of the Trump administration to suppress it. Given his deepening unpopularity, Trump and his allies in Congress survive politically only by undermining the most basic of democratic checks on autocracy.” More here.
From “Curing US Healthcare, Part III: The Future. What reform could look like” by Paul Krugman at his substack blog and writes in an unlocked repost that “US healthcare spending in 1980 was already higher than spending in other wealthy countries, but the gap was modest — about 1 ½ percent of GDP. By 2010, however, the gap had widened to more than 6 percent of GDP, although it has narrowed slightly since then…Moreover, if we look at spending per capita rather than spending as a share of GDP, the U.S. looks even worse, because US GDP per capita is higher than in the comparator countries…U.S. healthcare, then, has performed very poorly on a comparative basis, spending much more money than other nations yet delivering significantly worse results…It’s true that our relative performance improved after the enactment of the Affordable Care Act: The percentage of Americans without health insurance declined substantially, while the rate at which costs were rising slowed sharply..And now, under Trump II and Republican control of Congress, even the gains since 2010 are under severe assault…Looking forward, if MAGA is driven from power in 2026 and 2028, Democrats will have a chance to repair the damage. But times have changed: they should not settle for restoring the status quo as it existed in 2024. Post-MAGA, Democrats can and should aim for a more comprehensive healthcare reform with the aim of achieving universal coverage…it would be much less controversial, I believe, to offer a public option — allowing Americans, including employers providing insurance to their employees, to buy into a Medicare-type system. Many people surely would avail themselves of that option. And if they like what they get, which they probably would, we could transition over time to a single-payer system without forcing Americans into it.” More here.
