Some notes from “Pentagon probe points to U.S. missile hitting Iranian school” by NPR staffers Tom Bowman, Kat Lonsdorf and Geoff Brumfiel: “The U.S. has launched a formal investigation into a missile strike on an Iranian girls’ school that killed at least 165 civilians, many of them children, after a preliminary assessment determined the U.S. was at fault, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly. The investigation is expected to take months and will include interviews with all those involved, from planners and commanders to those who carried out the strike…If the U.S. role in the attack is confirmed, it would rank among the military’s most deadly incidents involving civilians in decades. Congress created a special Pentagon office to prevent the accidental targeting of civilians but it was dramatically scaled back by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth soon after he took office last year…As we have said, unlike the terrorist Iranian regime, the United States does not target civilians,” said White House spokesperson Anna Kelly…At a press conference shortly after the war began, Hegseth criticized “stupid rules of engagement,” and said such rules interfere with winning…NPR was the first news organization to report that the strike on the school appeared to be part of an attack involving precision weapons. Subsequent video of the strike released by Iranian state media gave visual indications that Tomahawk missiles struck a compound that included the school. Iranian state media also released pictures of Tomahawk missile components on a table in front of the school…NPR previously reported that the girls’ school was once part of what had been an Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval base and may have been shown on outdated U.S. target lists as a military building.” Arguments about who is most responsible for this tragedy will rage on. But President Jimmy Carter’s warning in his 2002 Nobel Peace Prize lecture resonates with increasing clarity: “We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.”

Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen share their thoughts in “1 big thing: A consensus Bill of Rights” at Axios, and write: “In this morning’s “Behind the Curtain” column, we showed how algorithms and screens hide a more normal and agreeable American public. This actually extends to many hot political debates: Most people agree on most big topics most of the time. The results are striking — and should give you hope. See if this aligns with your experience…This notional Bill of Rights synthesizes majority views from polling of U.S. adults:…🗽 1. Government should have no say in what we say, how we pray, how we protest and whom we love, provided we act legally…79% of Americans say the government has gone too far in restricting the right to free speech. Strikingly, this view is held by 88% of Democrats and 86% of independents, showing it’s not just a right-wing grievance. (NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll, October)…A landmark poll of 20,338 adults by the Kettering Foundation/Gallup Democracy for All Project, published in November, found 84% believe America’s racial, religious and cultural diversity is a strength…2. Government should keep the border tight, and settle the status of those who’ve been here for years…A record-high 79% of U.S. adults consider immigration good for the country. (Gallup, June)…Two-thirds of registered voters say local officials should cooperate with federal immigration authorities on deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes. (Harvard CAPS/Harris, January)…But support for legal immigration hit an all-time high in the 23 years the Chicago Council on Global Affairs has asked the question (49%). And two-thirds of U.S. adults in the poll, out in October, support a path to citizenship for undocumented workers currently contributing to the economy…4. Government should stop spending money we don’t have, on things we can’t afford…90% of registered voters are concerned that the national debt’s effect on inflation is increasing the cost of living, according to a poll out two weeks agofrom the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which is dedicated to increasing awareness of fiscal threats…7. Government should start caring about American workers as much as it cares about the rich and powerful…37% of Americans say “big business” is a bigger threat to the country’s future than labor or government, tying the high in Gallup’s trend…” More here.

Interviewed by Jen Rubin at The Contrarian, Philip H. Gordon,  Sydney Stein, Jr. Scholar in the Foreign Policy program’s Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology at Brookings, argues that “Let’s just start by acknowledging it is a terrible regime. It represses its people, it threatens its neighbors, it has sponsored terrors in the past, they did have a nuclear program. It would be a good thing if that regime were replaced…It would be great if we could replace that regime…The problem with that as a military mission, as you say, is that it’s just very unlikely to work. It’s never worked in the past, and we’ve tried this repeatedly. And we’ve tried it in different ways, with a full-on, you know, occupation invasion, like in Iraq, or just bombing, like in Libya. or arming the opposition in Syria, or international coalition in Afghanistan, there are all sorts of ways. But the problem is you remove the regime, however bad, and then you just create a political vacuum. And none of those formula we have tried has managed to put something stable in its place, and sometimes, like in Afghanistan, you go 20 years and you get the very guys that you threw out. In Iraq, you get a raging civil war…So, the problem is the impossibility of the mission, rather than the value of the mission, if we could do it. And Iran’s not going to be different, and that’s a mistake, you know, presidents have made repeatedly, but Trump seems to have made it, thinking, well, he’ll do it differently. Venezuela gave him a fantasy that you could knock out the regime. put in someone who would cooperate with you and everything would be fine. It’s very different, but what’s not different is that, in Iran, you have, as you mentioned, this hardened regime with thousands and thousands of armed men willing to kill and die for their cause, and you have a divided opposition that is unarmed, and so if you create chaos and quote-unquote knock out the regime, what is going to happen? probably not the moderate, friendly, pro-Western types that you’d like to come to power, but either, you know, all-out chaos, or the hard guys with guns.” More here.

A couple of salient insights from David Weigel’s “The Democratic tax fight that’s really over copying Republicans” at Semafor: ““One frustration with Democrats is that we have been working on and promising certain things, but we need to focus on how to actually deliver those things, more than how to deliver the message in a snappy, TikTok-friendly way,” he added…Democrats never explained how they lost the country between Trump’s two terms. (Bet on them never doing that.) But one popular theory is that the liberal groups over-sold the power of “deliveryism” — for example, that the Teamsters would appreciate the bailout of their pensions (nope) and college-educated voters would be thankful for student debt relief (hah)…An adjacent theory is that Trump promised more memorable, digestible benefits to voters than Democrats did, with “no tax on tips” as a case in point. Democrats are haunted by their failure to formalize a tax cut for tipped workers before Trump did, and they’ve studied how Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., ran far ahead of the presidential ticket after endorsing the Trump plan…The tax benefit for tipped workers made it into the GOP’s omnibus spending bill last year, and Democrats have been comfortable with their votes against it. But they don’t talk about repealing it, as James Carville recommended. For decades, they’ve run on keeping Republican tax cuts and reforms for lower-income people intact while raising taxes on the wealthy…A third new Democratic tax proposal this month, rolled out by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Ca., would “Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share.” Nobody else would pay anything…Democrats who still believe in the New Deal-era promise of government helping the public are a bit depressed by the idea that the solution to their party’s problems is generating less money for that purpose…“This is just totally playing on Republicans’ turf,” said Adam Jentleson, a former senior Senate Democratic aide and the founder of the Searchlight Institute. Read more here.

Those who insist that the Republican Party does not support racism  and anti-semitism have some fancy ‘splainin’ to do. As Malcom Ferguson reports in “GOP House Nominee Has Bragged About His Copy of Mein Kampf—and More” at The New Republic: “On Thursday, Texas GOP Representative Tony Gonzales dropped his reelection bid in Texas’s 23rd district amid an ethics investigation into reports that he had an affair with one of his staffers who later killed herself. His primary opponent—and now de facto GOP nominee—is Brandon Herrera, who is going viral for being a Nazi apologist…Herrera, a right-wing, pro-gun YouTuber who goes by “The AK Guy,” has plenty of troubling red flags…On Friday, a recent podcast clip began circulating featuring Herrera joking about Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf…“That’s my copy at my house next to a bunch of the German stick grenades,” Herrera said, showing a co-host a picture on his phone. “I got the 1939 edition printed in English, just because I thought it was wild that you couldn’t buy it on Amazon, but you could buy The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital.” Mein Kampf is very much available on Amazon, making Herrera’s lazy and ahistorical equivocation all the more troubling…In other past clips, Hererra has goose-stepped to a Nazi song, expressed affinity toward the white supremacist Dutch settlers who fought against locals and Communists in the Rhodesian Bush War, and referred to the Civil War as the “war of Northern aggression” while wearing a Confederate-flag shirt.”

From The Miami Times, Kevin Harris and Richard McDaniel report that “Trump’s affordability crisis is catching up to Republicans as Black and Brown voters shift.” Harris and McDaniel write, ” Donald Trump won 48% of Latino voters in 2024 – the best Republican showing in half a century. Fourteen months later, 70% disapprove of his performance as President. What changed? The price of groceries…Pew Research found 68% of Latinos say things are worse for them today than a year ago – the first time most Hispanics said this in nearly 20 years of surveys. Trump’s support among Hispanics has fallen to 28%, down 13 points since February, said The Economist/YouGov. And the U.S. Hispanic Business Council reports 42 percent of Latino business owners say things are worse for them under Trump… Black working-class voters face the same squeeze. Trump’s support with Black voters has fallen to just 10%, reports the New York Times. Among Blacks, high prices now poll higher than civil and voting rights concerns…When Black and Brown families can’t get ahead economically, social justice issues like civil rights and immigration tend to fall on their priority list. When rent hikes eat up raises or grocery bills climb 20% while pay stays flat, social issues become a luxury instead of a necessity… Democrats used this to their advantage in 2025 to reverse Trump’s gains with Black and Brown voters. In key races across Virginia and New Jersey, Democrats focused on high prices and showed pocket book messaging works strongly when it’s centered rather than mentioned as an add-on to social issues… Latino voters swung hard toward Democrats – backing Democratic governors by 37 and 34 point margins in New Jersey and Virginia. Kamala Harris only carried Latinos in these states by a razor-thin 3-point margin in 2024. Among Black voters, 89% voted for Democrats for governor in New Jersey and 86% in Virginia, while Harris carried Black voters by a much smaller margin at 68%, according to the Pew Research Center.” More here.

Justin Vassallo makes “The Case for a Radically Simple Democratic Agenda” at The Liberal Patriot: “Like my compatriots, I believe Democrats must develop clear policies that build economic democracy and strengthen existing laws meant to protect ordinary citizens from fraud and exploitation. Working families are not interested in piecemeal measures that do vanishingly little to increase their economic security and the prosperity of their communities, nor are they supportive of new wars for regime change overseas. I agree wholeheartedly, too, that the consequences of the cronyism this administration has indulged will not simply disappear with a changing of the guard. There will undoubtedly be many instances in which the next Democratic administration will have to restore administrative integrity, root out regulatory capture, and otherwise clean house…I’m not so confident, however, in the idea that Democrats, proverbial red marker in hand, must tally up every Trump offense and respond in-kind through an all-encompassing concept like Project 2029. Project 2029 is premised, in part, on reengaging voters who think Democrats have been timid about confronting the nation’s challenges. Democrats insist they want to flip red districts. Yet, while it may energize the party’s educated base, there are reasons to think Project 2029 is not suited to solving Democrats’ regional woes—that it will inevitably carry strong “culture war” connotations that do nothing to attenuate the pattern of fruitless political combat that has defined the better part of this century, in which no epochal majority coalition has been formed. Indeed, neither Project 2029 nor any of its equivalents is likely to fix the party’s image with working-class voters who associate Democrats with professional-class elitism and “woke” dogma.”

Vassallo continues: “To be clear, some of the ideas that could constitute Project 2029 are laudable and worth pursuing. Progressives committed to rebuilding shared prosperity and worker power are right to want to figure out how to do things better the next time around after the disjointed reforms and disheartening inefficiencies of the Biden years. The impetus to increase pressure on Democrats to show some spine, name the forces that have gamed the system, and stand up for Congress’s constitutional rights and duties correctly recognizes that Democrats have too often vacillated when given the chance to highlight the shallowness of Trump’s “populism.” To be effective, the core message in 2028 must be frank about the threats to the American dream and unflinching about what is needed to save it—not a banal promise to make life a little more affordable…Still, if Democrats are intent on truly reforming their party, shaking up the party system, and competing boldly in forbidding regions, they should try an experiment. Instead of drawing up a panoply of progressive wish lists dubbed Project 2029, Democrats should ask themselves: can they fit the heart of their agenda on a one-page memo without resorting to vague platitudes? Can they home in on a handful of pledges that would resonate from greater Boston to St. Louis to South Texas? Could they, in the case of projects that are for entirely appropriate reasons tailored to specific economic sectors or demographics, engender a spirit of reciprocity and mutual goodwill in the American people that depolarizes society? In short, can they sow belief that government can be a real instrument of economic progress and that revitalized communities will beget more?…Trump’s support may soon disintegrate, and his potential heirs may face dismal odds come 2028. Democrats, however, will remain at a disadvantage in too many parts of the country if they cannot, in plain, direct language, communicate a powerful vision to heighten the agency and aspirations of working Americans.” More here.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of major works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

The Democrats are set for a good—perhaps very good—2026 election. They seem almost certain to take back the House and the Senate, while still improbable, is within reach. But once they stop congratulating themselves for taking advantage of thermostatic reaction against a floundering Trump presidency, they’ll face a fresh and more daunting challenge: who to nominate for their 2028 presidential candidate?

That nominee is crucial for two reasons. Most obviously, Democrats should want a candidate who will maximize their chances of taking back the presidency. Successfully sorting through the potential nominees to find that candidate is not a given. On a deeper level, parties typically rebrand themselves after a period of coalitional attrition through a presidential nominee who newly defines their image (think Clinton, Obama). The 2028 nominee should ideally provide that new template for the national party.

That’s the assignment. The Democratic presidential primary electorate will be the ones carrying it out (or not). At this point, what can we say about those voters and what they might be inclined to do? Clearly it’s early and any poll that attempts to survey that electorate cannot precisely predict what it will look like in 2028. That said, Third Way has just released a treasure trove of data (topline, memo, presentation, crosstabs) on these voters that illuminates the playing field aspiring Democratic candidates will have to negotiate. Here are some of the most interesting findings.

(1) The Democratic presidential primary electorate is dominated by women (61 percent), whites (65 percent), and non-college voters (60 percent). In addition, a clear majority (55 percent) are over the age of 55; just 12 percent are under 30.

(2) In terms of ideology, the Democratic primary electorate skews liberal to left as one would expect. The survey asks about ideology in two different ways:

• socialist/progressive/liberal/moderate/conservative
• very liberal/somewhat liberal/moderate/somewhat conservative/very conservative.

In the first categorization, socialist (6 percent) + progressive (11 percent) + liberal (43 percent) are 60 percent of the sample; in the second categorization very liberal and somewhat liberal are both around 31 percent making liberals 62 percent of primary voters when categorized in that way. Moderates in both categorizations are 34 percent of the sample while conservatives are a trace presence.

Naturally, liberals are to the left of moderates on most questions on the survey but this difference is attenuated if you use the first categorization, which subtracts out the socialists and progressives, who are very left, from the liberal category. Moderates are also relatively close to those who are somewhat liberal in the second categorization while those who say they are very liberal (which includes nearly all the socialists and progressives) are quite far to the left of both. Of course, one should remember that, in turn, moderates who vote in Democratic presidential primaries are quite far to the left of moderates in the overall electorate.

(3) Some common-sense ideas that candidates could include in their platforms generate almost unanimous support for candidates who back them. These include: “Building on the Affordable Care Act to cap health care costs for everyone, making it easier to choose your own doctor, stopping hospital price gouging, and streamlining medical bills” (96 percent overall support); “Providing more low-cost vocational training and apprenticeship opportunities, so people can get good-paying jobs in growing fields without a four-year college degree” (95 percent); “Investing in a range of energy sources, including clean energy, to meet our rising energy demand and bring down our bills” (95 percent)”; and “Overhaul ICE to focus only on dangerous criminals, not families who have lived in the U.S. for years and are contributing to their communities” (93 percent). Such proposals not only have overwhelming support within the Democratic primary electorate, they should also be salable to independents, swing voters, and some disaffected Republicans.

Read more…

Having lived through a lot of military conflicts that initially enjoy bipartisan support, I thought it was important to note at New York that Trump’s Iran War is different:

As expected, on March 4 the U.S. Senate rejected Tim Kaine’s War Powers Act resolution ordering Donald Trump to cease attacks on Iran within 30 days unless he gets congressional authorization. It was basically a party-line vote, with (as is often the case) Rand Paul voting with Democrats for the resolution and John Fetterman voting with Republicans to kill it. The vote was mostly symbolic anyway since the House counterpart resolution was on the road to failure, too, and Trump could veto any war-powers measure that arrived at his desk.

But what the Senate vote did establish is that Trump can conduct his war on Iran without interference from Congress indefinitely — or more specifically, until the Pentagon runs out of money to prosecute it. And once again, his party is fine with giving this supposedly peacemaking president a blank check, even though he’s done a wretched job of providing any coherent rationale for going to war, any consistent set of war aims, or any clear timetable for winding it all down. The branch of the federal government with the exclusive constitutional authority to declare war seems ready to stand aside.

If the war does drag on long enough to exhaust the vast new funding Congress gave the Pentagon last year, there’s already talk of giving it more. Senator Lindsey Graham, credited (or blamed, by some) for talking Trump into a regime-change war against Iran, made that clear this earlier this week, notes Politico:

“During closed-door meetings on Capitol Hill … senior intelligence and defense officials described a vast military operation that many members anticipate will require extra funding on top of the nearly $1 trillion Congress has already given the military over the last year.

“’I think there will be a supplemental coming,’ Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters upon leaving his classified Senate briefing. ‘We’ll have to approve that.’”

Actually, they won’t “have to” approve additional funding. If the money runs out, suddenly Democrats will have some leverage over this war, just as they do over all spending that’s not provided for in a filibusterproof package like last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (which by all accounts isn’t happening again prior to the midterms and won’t happen at all if Democrats flip control of the House in November). And despite their tendency to write blank checks for this administration, cries for more money for the war in Iran could arouse questions from conservative fiscal hawks, as a separate Politico report observes:

“Passing any emergency funding will be a major fight on Capitol Hill, with Democrats already decrying the lack of details about how much the military is spending and Republican fiscal hawks wary of more spending. Reuters reported Tuesday that Deputy ‌Defense ⁠Secretary Steve Feinberg has been leading Pentagon work on a roughly $50 billion request.”

This does create a messaging problem for those Republican fiscal hawks who happily vote to let the president do whatever he wants with our country’s massive war machine but aren’t sure they want to pay for it. Just as importantly, a debate over war funding in Congress would provide a forum for Democratic questions about the purpose and duration of a conflict no one had reason to anticipate just a few weeks ago.

So for now, Republicans fully own this war, and share responsibility for the president’s decision to make it his top priority for the foreseeable future. It comes at the expense of other international obligations, and instead of any action on an “affordability agenda” his advisers and GOP lawmakers have been begging him to undertake ever since Democrats began winning off-year elections in 2025. Trump’s party better hope it all goes very well and ends very quickly.

From “CNN Data Guru Sees Warning Signs for GOP After ‘Dumpster Fire’” by Julia Owned at The Daily Beast:

CNN’s data guru said the closely watched primaries in Texas yielded a “tremendous” turnout for one party and a “dumpster fire” for another.

Harry Enten said 2.3 million Democratic voters in Texas came out for the hotly contested Senate primary between State Rep. James Talarico and House Rep. Jasmine Crockett, marking the highest-ever turnout at more than twice the average this century, with only 92 percent of the estimated vote in so far.

At New York, I offered some thoughts about the opportunity costs (and for Democrats, opportunities!) of Trump pursuing a war of choice in an election year:

Donald Trump’s “war of choice” against Iran is a big departure from his administration’s alleged determination to focus on improving the domestic economy and addressing concerns about affordability before crucial midterm elections this November. But aside from the president’s spectacular failure to stay on message, there is a more specific problem with the sudden lurch into a regional war in the Middle East. To the extent Trump had an actual affordability agenda (other than calling concerns about living costs “a hoax”), a central pillar was keeping energy prices low by demolishing any obstacles to maximum exploitation of fossil-fuel resources. Aside from the beneficial effect this might have on prices for other goods and services influenced by energy costs, the “drill baby drill” mentality was designed to reduce gasoline pump prices, one of the most visible inflation indicators from the perspective of regular folks.

Suddenly, the United States has produced an energy-price crisis for itself and for the whole world, Reuters reports:

“Traffic through the Strait ​of Hormuz was closed for a fourth day after Iran attacked five ships, choking off a key artery accounting for about 20% of global oil and LNG supply. …

“The conflict risks triggering a renewed spike in inflation that could choke off economic recovery in Europe and Asia if the war is prolonged in a region that accounts for just under a third of global ​oil production and almost a fifth of natural gas.

“Iraq, OPEC’s second-largest producer, on Tuesday said it may be forced to cut production by more than three million barrels per day ​in a few days if oil tankers cannot move freely to loading points, according to two Iraqi oil officials.”

While other countries face the most dire immediate economic consequences from a war that Trump is now projecting to last a month or more (“whatever it takes,” to be precise), it’s about to affect Americans too:

“American motorists could soon pay more at the pump amid spiking oil prices due to the U.S.-Israel attacks on Iran, with experts predicting gasoline prices could rise sharply this week.

“The price of West Texas Intermediate crude, a type of oil primarily produced in the U.S., jumped 6.2% on Monday to $71.19 per barrel, according to data from FactSet. Brent crude, the international benchmark, surged nearly 9% to $79.31 per barrel on Monday, its highest point in more than a year.

“Gas prices in the U.S. could start moving higher as soon as Monday, according to GasBuddy petroleum analyst Patrick De Haan, who predicted that some gas stations could be charging as much as 30 cents more per gallon by the end of the week.”

And the indirect effects could be even more severe, as Canadian energy expert Rory Johnston told our own Benjamin Hart:

“I think if this lasts a couple more days, we’ll see it reflected at the gas pump in terms of overall gas prices. Diesel will be even more acutely affected. I think the big impact will be on freight and shipping rates, and that’s going to hit consumers more on the price of produce, the price of random consumer goods. That’s the type of stuff that diesel will complicate more. So I think you will see an impact at the price of the pumps, but the biggest impact won’t be as visible to consumers immediately. It will take a while to work through the supply chain.”

As part of their furious spin about a war that’s already unpopular outside Trump’s Republican base, administration gabbers are arguing that Trump’s expansion of fossil-fuel production is giving him the strategic flexibility to wreck global oil markets without catastrophic consequences, notes the New York Times:

“The Trump administration has said that it has more leeway to act aggressively in the Middle East because the world is flush with oil and gas, thanks in part to record U.S. production, and has less to fear than it once did from energy price shocks.

“The ongoing war in Iran could put that theory to the test.”

While it may be comforting to Americans to be told they won’t be paying as much for this war as they might have had Trump not impatiently brushed aside environmental fears about fossil fuels, it doesn’t explain the decision to subordinate economic policy to another presidential military adventure. Yes, MAGA true believers are buying Trump’s claim that Iran’s nuclear-weapon and missile programs posed an immediate threat to the United States, but other Americans aren’t at the moment. So his decision go in this radical direction sure looks like a conscious choice to subordinate the daily concerns of his own people to a globalist agenda and an alliance with Israel that already troubles a majority of Americans.

Even as Republicans cheer this war, Democrats have an obligation to discuss the agenda being blown up by the explosions in Iran.

Ben Kamisar writes in “Poll: Majority of voters disapprove of how Trump has handled Iran” at NBC News: “A majority of registered voters disapprove of how President Donald Trump is handling the situation in Iran and believe the U.S. shouldn’t have taken military action against the country, according to a new NBC News poll…Though support for the White House is mostly polarized along party lines, a small but notable slice of Republicans is unhappy with the decision to launch a war in the Middle East. There was also a significant split between younger and older voters in the early days of the attacks…Fifty-four percent of voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of Iran, compared with 41% who approve and 5% who say they either don’t have an opinion or aren’t sure. A similar share, 52%, say the U.S. should not have taken the military action, while 41% say it should have and 7% say they aren’t sure…The poll is an initial snapshot of how American voters are digesting a major new military endeavor launched by a president who campaigned against past “endless wars” when he sought to return to the White House in 2024…“This is a lower level of support than in most of the major military action that we’ve seen,” said Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, who conducted the poll with Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates…The results show clear, if expected, partisan polarization over the issue: An overwhelming majority of Democrats, 89%, say the U.S. shouldn’t have struck Iran. Among independents, 58% agree…The new NBC News poll also found a deep divide over the Iran war by age, with younger voters far more sour on the strikes than older voters…Two-thirds of voters under 35 say the U.S. shouldn’t have struck Iran, a sentiment shared by 53% of those ages 35 to 49. A slim majority, 52%, of those 50 to 64 support the strikes, while those 65 and older are split…There is also an educational divide in the survey — an increasingly common feature of polarized American politics. Voters without college degrees are about evenly split over the strikes, while those with bachelor’s or postgraduate degrees overwhelmingly believe the U.S. shouldn’t have struck Iran.”

A new CNN poll found that “59% of Americans disapprove of Iran strikes and most think a long-term conflict is likely,” as Jennifer Agiesta and Ariel Edwards-Levy write at CNN Politics: “Nearly 6 in 10 Americans disapprove of the US decision to take military action in Iran, as most say a long-term military conflict between the two nations is likely, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS…The poll, fielded shortly after US and Israeli attacks launched the war with Iran, finds majorities express doubts about President Donald Trump’s handling of the situation. Most say they lack trust in Trump to make the right decisions about US use of force in Iran, with 60% saying they do not think he has a clear plan for handling the situation and 62% saying he should get congressional approval for any further military action…Just over a quarter (27%) feel that the US made enough of an effort at diplomacy with Iran before using military force, with 39% saying the US did not try hard enough at diplomacy first and 33% unsure…The poll was conducted Saturday and Sunday, after news reports that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, had died in the attacks and largely before reports emerged of the deaths of six US troops…Overall, 59% of Americans disapprove of the initial decision to strike Iran, with 41% approving. Strong disapproval (31%) roughly doubles strong approval (16%). A marginally higher share (44%) say they favor the US trying to overthrow the Iranian government, with 56% opposed to that…Just 12%, though, would favor sending US ground troops into Iran, while 60% would oppose it and 28% are unsure…Most, 54%, say Iran will become more of a threat to the US as a result of this military action, with just 28% saying the strikes will make Iran less of a threat.”

In “Senate Republicans vote down legislation to halt Iran war in Congress’ first vote on the conflict,” Stephen Groves. Lisa Mascaro and Mary Clare Jalonick write at Associated Press: “Senate Republicans voted down an effort Wednesday to halt President Donald Trump’s war against Iran, demonstrating early support for a conflict that has rapidly spread across the Middle East with no clear U.S. exit strategy…The legislation, known as a war powers resolution, failed on a 47-53 vote tally. The vote fell mostly along party lines, though Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky voted in favor and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted against…The war powers resolution gave lawmakers an opportunity to demand congressional approval before any further attacks are carried out. The vote forced them to take a stand on a war shaping the fate of U.S. military members, countless other lives and the future of the region…“Today every senator — every single one — will pick a side,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said before the vote. “Do you stand with the American people who are exhausted with forever wars in the Middle East or stand with Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth as they bumble us headfirst into another war?”…Six U.S. military members were killed over the weekend in a drone strike in Kuwait…Trump has also not ruled out deploying U.S. ground troops. He has said he is hoping to end the bombing campaign within a few weeks, but his goals for the war have shifted from regime change to stopping Iran from developing nuclear capabilities to crippling its navy and missile programs…“We should be careful about opening a door into chaos in the Middle East when we cannot see the other side of it,” Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware said in a solemn floor speech after the vote concluded…“Nobody gets to hide and give the president an easy pass or an end-run around the Constitution,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, the Virginia Democrat leading the war powers resolution.” In the House of Representatives, several members had something to say about the war. “One of them was Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo. “I learned when I was fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, that when elites in Washington bang the war drums, pound their chest, talk about the costs of war and act tough, they’re not talking about them doing it, they’re not talking about their kids,” Crow said. “They’re talking about working class kids like us.”

In Texas, State Rep. James Talarico won the marquee Democratic primary contest for the nomination to run for U.S. Senate against  the Republican nominee, who will be designated in a run-off election.  Democrats have reason to hope that their party will be unified for the midterm elections. Kayla Guo reports at The Texas Tribune, via click2houston.com, that Talarico’s opponent in the primary election, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett “said she had called Talarico to congratulate him on winning the nomination, and she suggested she would remain involved to boost the party in November. “Texas is primed to turn blue and we must remain united because this is bigger than any one person,” Crockett said in her statement. “This is about the future of all 30 million Texans and getting America back on track. With the primary behind us, Democrats must rally around our nominees and win. I’m committed to doing my part and will continue working to elect Democrats up and down the ballot.” Guo adds, “A Democrat has not won a U.S. Senate seat in Texas since 1988. And while Texas is not on national Democrats’ list of targets to retake the Senate, party leaders in the state see a prime opportunity this year to finally flip Texas, hoping that backlash to the Trump administration, a brutal Senate primary on the Republican side and the possibility of facing hard-right, scandal-plagued Attorney General Ken Paxton will all set the stage for an upset…The contest at the top of the Democratic ticket, meanwhile, drove over 1.5 million primary voters to the polls over the 11-day early voting period, more than doubling early turnout during the last midterm primary election in 2022, according to VoteHub.” A couple of lessons from the contest: 1. Money is still important. Talarico way outspent Crockett. Tasha Telaperas reports at Axios that Talarico’s campaign spent 7.6 million in advertising, plus he befitted by a couple million spent by PACs, compared to $845K spent by Crockett for TX. 2. Court the Latino vote in TX, as did Talarico, who “formed an alliance with Bobby Pulido, a Tejano music star,” who also won his own Democratic primary for TX-15. Talarico’s brand of Christianity, which called out cruel treatment of immigrants as unchristian, probably also helped him with Latinos and liberals. No doubt some voters liked Crockett, but believed Talarico’s moderate liberal tone had a better chance to win against the Republican nominee this year. Although Crockett didn’t win the primary, she could still become America’s most influential Democrat in the 2026 election, if she galvanizes November turnout in support of Talarico in Dallas and Houston — and especially if  Democrats win majority control of the U.S. Senate as a result.

Some insights from “Cornyn, Paxton in ugly runoff: 5 takeaways from Texas, North Carolina primaries” by Caroline Vakill and Julia Mueller at The Hill:

Texas Republicans are bracing for an ugly Senate runoff, while Democrats wait to see the outcome of its contest for the upper chamber, with primary season in full swing.

Voters in Texas, North Carolina and Arkansas headed to the polls Tuesday to kick start the 2026 midterm cycle. Texas held competitive primaries for Senate, state attorney general and a number of House districts, which included several awkward Democratic matchups.

The Tar Heel State, meanwhile, weighed in on the primaries to succeed retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) in addition to a heated House race between an establishment Democrat and younger progressive challenger…Republican runoffs were also projected in Texas’s 9^th, 23rd and 35^th Congressional Districts.

Vakil and Mueller note further:

In Texas, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) are projected to head into a May 26 runoff. Cornyn, Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) vied for the GOP nod, but no candidate was able to win more than half the vote outright to avoid a runoff on Tuesday…Republicans are already bracing for an ugly multi-month brawl, with tens of millions of dollars already spent in the GOP primary thus far…  “I refuse to allow a flawed, self-centered and shameless candidate like Ken Paxton risk everything we’ve worked so hard to build over these many years,” Cornyn told supporters at his watch party, according to CBS Austin.

Meanwhile, the Senate Democratic primary between Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) and state Rep. James Talarico had not been called as of 1:15 a.m. EST Wednesday. Talarico had more than 50 percent with about over 75 percent of the votes reported, according to Decision Desk HQ.

Vakil and Mueller add:

Litigation in Dallas County over extended voting on Tuesday roiled the Democratic contest, raising questions about whether a final tally would emerge on Election Day…The Texas Supreme Court’s decision to temporarily pause a lower court’s ruling allowing an extension of voting hours in Dallas County has not only stirred the Senate Democratic primary, but is also impacting a prominet House contest for the party…Dallas County has separate polling locations for both political parties, and confusion over this practice sparked calls from Democrats for the country to extend voting hours for Texans seeking to cast their vote at the correct polling location…A Texas judge allowed voting to be extended two more hours in the county before The Lone Star State’s highest court temporarily halted that decision, asking that any votes cast after 8 p.m. ET be separated from the final tally.

But it wasn’t all abut Texas, as Vakil and Mueller add:

The picture was less murky in North Carolina, where former Gov. Roy Cooper (D) and former Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley were projected to win their respective primaries for Senate early Tuesday. The Tar Heel State is seen as a key pickup opportunity for Democrats given Tillis’s retirement.

Further,

Democratic turnout surged in Texas and North Carolina, adding to signs of the party’s midterm momentum…In Texas, early turnout in the Democratic primary outpaced Republicans and exceeded totals from recent cycles, energized by the marquee Senate race…  Roughly 1.4 million voters cast ballots in the Democratic primary during early voting, which ended Friday, according to unofficial data from the Texas secretary of state’s office. Across the aisle, roughly 1.2 million voted early in the GOP election…In 2018, when Democrats came within just a couple points of flipping another Senate seat, roughly 1.1 million turned out across early and Election Day voting in the party’s primary, compared to 1.5 million in that year’s Republican contest.

More here.

From “Iran conflict could worsen America’s affordability crisis” by Courtenay Brown at Axios: “The Iran conflict abroad threatens to worsen the affordability crisis at home, as an oil price spike ripples through to pump prices Americans see every day…Why it matters: This has become one defining tension of President Trump’s second term — foreign policies that could undercut core domestic promises to lower prices for American consumers, just months ahead of midterm elections…That tension has been on display with global trade: Trump imposed steep import taxes aimed at leveling the trade playing field, but the result has been higher goods prices for consumer staples…The big picture: Gas prices have been a deflationary tailwind for Trump. Prices in January were down more than 7% from a year ago, putting downward pressure on overall inflation…Turmoil in the Middle East could reverse that trend, though it is still unclear how long any price surge will last, or how steep it might be…A $10 rise in crude prices translates into a spike of roughly 24 cents a gallon, according to RSM chief economist Joe Brusuelas…Zoom in: Gas prices are plastered everywhere, making them the most powerful political and psychological signal about the cost of living. Any spike in prices would compound the pressure on Americans’ budgets and further sour their perceptions about the economy…For the past half-century, when gas prices rose consumers’ overall inflation expectations have followed suit. (That link broke down last year: gas prices declined but consumers still expected higher inflation as a result of high tariffs.)” More here.

E. J. Dionne, Jr. explains why “Why Trump’s Fearmongering Is Falling Flat With Voters” at The New York Times: In his State f the Union speech “Mr. Trump demonstrated something too often overlooked: He can win when he’s not the incumbent and can go on the attack (2016, 2024), but he leads his party to defeat when he has to govern and fails to deliver (2018, 2020)…The lesson for Democrats here is obvious: They need to get over their terror of Mr. Trump’s assumed magic and mastery — they’re ebbing — and their anxiety that the voters who decide elections share his contempt for so many of our fellow Americans. For the next eight months, Democrats must shelve their affection for gloomy self-analysis and needless arguments over which word to pick between “oligarchy” and “authoritarianism.”…Between now and November, their task is to keep the country focused on Mr. Trump’s failures on the issues that elected him: The economy (especially prices) and immigration. They are failures bred by what everyone outside the “Make America Great Again” base knows: Mr. Trump reserves his energies for his own interests and those of his allies. Everyone else — a majority of our fellow citizens — amounts either to an extra he occasionally brings onto the set for his performances or a villain he invokes to make himself the hero of the story.”

Dionne continues, “This is why the Democratic response to Tuesday’s speech, from Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, was in exactly the right key. She summed up this year’s midterm elections in three questions: “Is the president working to make life more affordable for you and your family? Is the president working to keep Americans safe — both at home and abroad? Is the president working for you?” That’s it. That’s the campaign. For good measure, Ms. Spanberger explained how voters can tell that Mr. Trump’s focus is not on working Americans. “Who benefits from his rhetoric, his policies, his actions and the short list of laws he’s pushed through this Republican Congress?” she asked. “He’s enriching himself, his family, his friends. The scale of the corruption is unprecedented.”…As important, she went straight at Mr. Trump’s cruelty, confident that most Americans don’t share it. She reframed the immigration debate in one sentence: “Our broken immigration system is something to be fixed — not an excuse for unaccountable agents to terrorize our communities.” Repair something that’s not working? Yes. Rip “nursing mothers away from their babies”? No.”

Dionne adds, “If there’s one thing Democrats in the center and on the left agree on, it’s that the party has to reverse its declines among working-class voters. Mr. Trump is making their job a lot easier. The president used to be quite good at hiding his solicitude toward the very wealthy who contribute to his political and personal coffers. Not anymore. How many clips and photos have you seen of Mr. Trump happily hobnobbing with the superrich? And how many with men and women toiling on assembly lines or in warehouses? His alignment with billionaires is so obvious that even his loyal white working-class supporters are beginning to break away…The left’s anti-oligarchy messaging is often seen as conflicting with the anti-authoritarian, pro-institution messaging of more moderate Democrats. But Mr. Trump is leading an increasingly authoritarian government dedicated, above all, to his own narrow interests and to those of very wealthy people who help him achieve his ends…To distract attention from this battle, Mr. Trump regularly tries to provoke hostility toward the groups he hates. Maybe he could pull it off if Americans were happier about the economy. But since so many feel let down, the message of his diatribes is that the only thing he can deliver after 13 months in office is fear itself. It’s a tired act. A presidency built on reruns is rapidly losing its audience.”