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Responsible State Craft
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[l] at 11/6/26 10:05pm
The Democratic sweep of the midterm elections has been greeted with a wary relief across Europe. After two years of President Donald Trump's tariffs, threats to annex Greenland and scolding of European NATO allies on defense spending, many European politicians see the Republican defeat as a welcome course correction. Yet the reactions also expose the contradictions of the European Union’s own foreign policy, particularly toward the wars in Iran and Ukraine.Rather than examining the causes of Trump’s defeat, EU leaders have chosen to interpret it as a vindication of their own ideological beliefs.The EU high representative for foreign policy, Kaja Kallas, unsurprisingly, saw in the election a hope that the new Congress will strengthen transatlantic unity and support for Ukraine, presumably reversing Trump’s insufficient devotion to the Ukrainian cause, which she criticized earlier. In a similar vein, Christel Schaldemose, a vice president of the European Parliament, voiced “cautious optimism” that the results could “benefit Ukraine and the green transition.” Spain’s center-left prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, meanwhile, interpreted the vote as a “rejection of inequality, hatred, sexism and climate denial.”Yet there is no evidence that the GOP debacle was caused primarily by Trump’s perceived lack of support for Ukraine or that it was a vindication of a progressive social agenda.Rather, the polls, including Associated Press-NORC, New York Times/Siena, Fox News, and Gallup, consistently showed that, on average, around 75% to 80% said the “cost of living” (gas prices) and Iran war played an important role in how they planned to vote. In exit polls, 74% of voters said the war was a “crucial” or “major” factor in their decision Tuesday. Vice President JD Vance himself rated the Iran war as the top reason for the Republican wipeout.Those in Europe who quickly seized on the anti-war sentiment were, revealingly, not the centrists opposed to Trump for ideological reasons, but his erstwhile admirers on the nationalist right. Jordan Bardella, leader of France's National Rally, and Alice Weidel, the leader of Germany's Alternative for Germany (AfD), both parties leading the polls in their respective countries, blamed Trump’s defeat on the economic consequences of his war in Iran.This was an astute political move by the nationalists. They opposed the Iran war from the start, while some of the European leaders who initially welcomed the war are now complaining about its consequences.German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is a particularly revealing example. When Israel attacked Iran in June 2025, he praised it for doing the West's "dirty work." He defended the much larger American-Israeli bombing campaign launched in February 2026, declaring that this was “no time to lecture our allies on international law.”Now Merz laments that the war has cost Europe more than €100 billion through higher energy prices. The “dirty work” has come with a hefty bill. The European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who spoke of a “democratic transition” in Tehran as the U.S. and Israeli bombs began falling, now places the war’s price tag at €127 billion ($143 billion) in additional fossil fuels. Neither Merz nor von der Leyen are on the record of connecting publicly the outcome of the elections to the war on Iran, however.Merz and von der Leyen epitomize a broader European failure. EU governments had little meaningful influence over Washington's decision to go to war. Nevertheless, some, like Germany, supported it. Others, like France, acknowledged that the war violated international law, but put emphasis on Iran’s “destabilizing behaviour” in the region. Still others, like Italy, Portugal, Bulgaria, and Cyprus cooperated by allowing the U.S. to use military bases on their territories to attack Iran. Spain's Pedro Sánchez was a notable exception, fully opposing the war from the outset. Now, EU leaders find themselves in a bind of their own making, being blamed by the opposition for enabling a war that impoverishes their own citizens. And the cost of that support is no longer measured in inflation and prices alone, but also security. Iran made it clear that, should the U.S. and Israel attack again, it will retaliate against any country that facilitates those attacks. The NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte foolishly boasted that “5000 sorties” of U.S. aircraft were launched from Europe. European countries that cooperated in these actions are becoming legitimate targets, from Tehran’s perspective. The only way out of this predicament is for EU leaders to follow Sanchez’s lead and refuse to play any role in supporting, in any way, any further U.S. or Israeli attacks against Iran. Instead, they should work to recover their own diplomatic role in the Middle East, including engagement with Iran and working with regional countries, like Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman, to de-escalate tensions. Yet Europe’s inability to distance itself from Washington’s war on Iran wasn’t simply a matter of bad judgement. It reflected EU leaders’ belief that submission to Trump was a necessary price to keep him on the side of Europe and Ukraine against Russia. That was an obvious miscalculation; Trump has consistently shown his preference for cutting a deal with Moscow. European leaders must now understand that hoping Democratic control of Congress will simply mean a restoration of hawkish trans-atlanticism would be no less delusional than appeasing Trump has proved to be.It is possible that a Democratic Congress could seek to increase military assistance to Kyiv and impose tougher sanctions on Moscow. But there is another possibility: Democrats may well choose to concentrate on domestic affairs and the economic consequences of the Iran war, leaving Trump considerable room to pursue negotiations with Moscow. The elections, after all, had little to do with Trump’s Ukraine policy.The inherent uncertainty about the U.S. approach is part of the problem. EU elites must finally recognize that their security cannot remain hostage to the shifting fortunes of American domestic politics. Fortunately, two European countries have recently demonstrated a way forward. On October 27, Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre spoke directly with the Russian President Vladimir Putin about the war in Ukraine and prospects for renewed negotiations. Both Finland and Norway are NATO members, share borders with Russia, and strongly support Ukraine. Yet their leaders recognized that deterrence and diplomacy are not mutually exclusive. Although their initiative did not produce an immediate breakthrough, it showed that Europeans can engage Moscow without abandoning Kyiv or waiting for Washington to act.The wars in Iran and Ukraine expose two sides of the same European predicament. In the Middle East, Europe has paid an enormous economic price for military decisions it did not control – and failed to oppose. In Ukraine, it has committed substantial resources while hoping for Washington to take the lead in confronting Russia. Both gambits failed. A Democratic Congress cannot rescue Europe from the need to pursue its own strategic autonomy. That means more than higher defense spending or buying fewer American weapons. It also requires rejecting unnecessary wars, engaging adversaries, and pursuing diplomatic initiatives independently. Contrary to the claims of many EU elites, the vote in the U.S. appears to be less a sign of a global rollback of national populism than a reflection of a growing backlash in the West against endless wars. The governments in Europe can only ignore that sentiment at their own peril.

[Category: Ukraine, Kaja-kallas, Iran-war, Populism, 2026-midterms]

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[l] at 11/5/26 10:05pm
If foreign-policy restrainers of both parties are looking for a model the new Congress can follow once it takes office in January, they could do worse than to refer back to the 1974 midterm election that brought to Washington a tidal wave of young Democrats who quickly passed legislation placing unprecedented constraints on the power of the “Imperial Presidency,” which had reached its zenith under former President Richard Nixon.In many respects, the parallels between the 1974 midterms and the results of Tuesday’s election are eerie. Though Nixon, whose own imperial pretensions were more sartorial than architectural, had resigned from office three months before the vote, his abuses of executive powers loomed large over the election. Those abuses were, after all, hard to ignore: from Watergate and the impoundment of Congressional appropriations at home, to the secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos and the covert CIA campaign to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Chile abroad.The popular rejection of Nixon’s secrecy and executive overreach was coupled with an economic recession made much worse by the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo, which, in an echo of the current U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, was prompted by Washington’s military support for Israel during the October 1973 war.It was in this context that Democrats, while still a somewhat fractious majority in both houses of Congress on the eve of the 1974 midterms, made a net gain of four Senate seats and a whopping 49 House seats, beefing up their position and bringing to Washington no fewer than 76 new members. Many of these so-called “Watergate babies” shared associations with the antiwar and human rights movements. Even before the new Congress was seated in January 1975, the lame-duck Congress felt the vote had given it a mandate curb executive powers that had enabled Nixon and his powerful national security adviser and secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, to involve the United States in unpopular conflicts abroad and support highly repressive foreign regimes. That same Congress had passed the War Powers Act two years before by a bipartisan supermajority over Nixon’s veto.In its December 1974 session, the outgoing Congress approved a foreign aid bill that, among other provisions, imposed strict limits on the U.S. military presence in South Vietnam and on U.S. military and security assistance and arms transfers to the military junta in Chile, as well as South Korea and Turkey, setting the precedent for conditioning future U.S. aid and other support to countries on their respect for human rights. Included in the same bill was the so-called Hughes-Ryan Amendment, which banned the CIA and the Defense Department from carrying out covert actions without an official “presidential finding” and “timely notification” to as many as eight congressional committees.Once seated, the new Congress acted quickly to build on those measures. In January, the Senate voted 82-4 to establish what became known as the Church Committee (after its chairman, Idaho Sen. Frank Church), which investigated intelligence abuses by the CIA, the FBI, and other U.S. intelligence agencies. The following month, the House voted 286-120 to carry out its own investigation, known as the Pike Committee after its chairman, New York Congressman Otis Pike.Among other things, the committees’ work and the abuses they uncovered resulted in the passage of the Clark Amendment. Part of the Arms Export Control Act of 1976, the amendment banned all direct or indirect U.S. military or paramilitary assistance to any faction in the civil war in Angola in which the CIA, at Kissinger’s direction, had secretly intervened alongside South Africa and its proxies in trying to overthrow the regime in Luanda after independence from Portugal.Passed by a bipartisan coalition in both houses, the Arms Export Control Act also aimed to rein in the transfer of major U.S. weapons systems to various authoritarian regimes, a policy that Kissinger, in particular, favored as a way to enhance bilateral ties with those countries. It required the Pentagon to provide details of all such transfers in advance, gave Congress the power to veto them, and banned transfers to governments with a "consistent pattern of gross violations of human rights,” in what became the precursor to the “Leahy Laws.”That same year, Congress also passed the National Emergencies Act of 1976, which, among other provisions, gives Congress the power to terminate any presidential declaration of emergency.In the 60 years that have since passed, some of these laws have been watered down, effectively ignored, or even repealed — mostly, but by no means exclusively, by Republican administrations and their congressional supporters. And an “imperial presidency”has returned —particularly in Trump’s second term, during which he has issued an avalanche of Executive Orders, many of them to pursue a militaristic domestic and foreign policy by designating people and groups terrorists here and abroad.But Tuesday’s Democratic blowout across the country may have created an opportunity for the reassertion of congressional power on the order of what took place 62 years ago.It is true that the Democrats will not enjoy the near-veto-proof majorities in Congress they won in 1974. They may claim as many as 56 seats in the Senate, still four fewer than back then. And, despite tremendous gains in the House, they’ll fall well short of 291 seats. On the other hand, it’s worth noting that much of the 1970s legislation was bipartisan, and Trump’s new “lame duck” status could empower Republicans who have shown signs of discomfort with the presidency policies, particularly on the war..Despite the hyper-partisanship of recent politics, is it too far-fetched to imagine bipartisan agreement on legislation to constrain the executive, particularly on foreign policy? A number of Republican lawmakers, for example, have demanded greater oversight over the administration’s lethal policy of bombing boats suspected of carrying drugs in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, noted Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive.“This new Congress has both the opportunity and the ability to stand up to Trump’s imperial impulses, his wannabe emperor syndrome, which is likely to become more pronounced now that he has so dramatically lost his domestic support,” Kornbluh told RS. “The 1975-76 Congress created a model for curtailing the executive’s interventionist impulses abroad.”In this regard, one only has to cite Vice President JD Vance’s assessment on X Wednesday morning, in which he blamed the Republican wipeout on the war in Iran. “If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so,” he wrote in what probably reflects a serious split within the party and even within the administration itself. Indeed, four Republican members in both the House and Senate voted alongside virtually every Democrat for an Iran war powers resolution in June. Could those numbers increase in the wake of Tuesday’s election and a weaker White House?Of course, Democrats in the incoming Congress will not have enough votes by themselves to overcome a veto, and Trump has already promised to wield that power against any legislation he doesn’t like. “With the filibuster in place and no veto-proof majority… and a president who is a norm-buster, I just see more paralysis,” Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told RS, “I think the impact (of the election) on foreign policy will be negligible.”As in 1974, much will depend on how the Republican survivors of Tuesday’s “bluenami” assess the election’s meaning for their own political futures.

[Category: Richard-nixon, Vietnam-war, Corruption, War-powers, 2026-midterms]

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[l] at 11/5/26 10:05pm
For the last eight months, the Iran war has been a topic of fierce debate: is the war in our national interest? Was Iran an imminent threat? Should we stay the course or escalate? This debate raged through the historic MAGA coalition that brought Donald Trump and JD Vance to the White House. My position on it was clear: the war was the catalyst for my resignation from the Trump administration — and likely for many others who left without making their disagreement public. This debate burned hot and loudly in right wing circles online, on podcasts and occasionally even on right-wing mainstream platforms like Fox News. Then suddenly, on Tuesday night, after months of deafening argument, all of that debate was suddenly silenced, like a father coming home from work telling bickering siblings to knock off the racket. The American people loudly rejected the war by voting against President Trump’s Republican party and handing the Democrats a historic landslide, granting them solid control of the House and Senate. The American people settled the debate. It's time to end the war in Iran. This is irrefutable, as Vice President Vance has admitted. Over 70% of voters blamed the Iran war and our off balanced relationship with Israel for the out of control inflation that affects their daily lives and have zero tolerance for more wars of choice. With this clear message from the American people, Trump must immediately end the war – today. No good will come from prolonging the conflict; the American people have made this painfully very clear. President Trump must end the war by making it clear to his national security team that the war is over. To ensure that he is not thwarted by the neocon national security “blob” as he was in his first administration, he needs to fire and replace the secretary of defense (Pete Hegseth), the CIA director (John Ratcliffe), the secretary of state (Marco Rubio) and his chief of staff (Susie Wiles). President Trump must bring in new appointees who understand that we must end the war and who know how these institutions will likely attempt to keep us at war. Above all, these new leaders must have the courage and management skills to ensure these organizations do exactly as the president instructs. We end the war by withdrawing our troops from the Persian Gulf and lifting our blockade. This is not as dramatic as it sounds. Iran has already destroyed most of our bases in the Gulf and proven once and for all that these bases are a strategic liability and not a strategic asset. They are already past their expiration date; leaving them behind once and for all is in our interest, not a defeat. Removing the naval blockade serves two key functions: first it removes a valuable target that Iran could hit, which would drag us back into the war on Iran’s terms, not ours. Second, removing the blockade throws the diplomatic ball back in Iran’s court. We have reached an impasse diplomatically, with the Iranians refusing to give concessions while they are under blockade and the threat of being attacked. The Iranians use the blockade to justify their aggression in the Persian Gulf. If we remove the blockade, the Iranians won’t have any more justification for acting aggressively in the Strait of Hormuz and will likely opt for quiet diplomacy with their Gulf neighbors to come up with a workable arrangement for getting tankers through the strait. We can also offer gradual relief of sanctions on Iranian oil and natural gas so that Iran is incentivized to keep the waterway open. As we remove our troops from the region, we must also meaningfully restrain the Israelis to ensure that they don’t thwart our efforts to end the war, as they have in previous cease fire talks. Restraining Israel means more than just rhetoric: we must remove significant components of the air defense assets like the American missile defense batteries that we give to the Israelis so they are forced to use their resources for defense and not offense. The president must also demand that the lame-duck Republican Congress remove section 219 from the National Defense Authorization Act and section 662 from the intelligence authorization act. These provisions will give Israel invaluable access to the most sensitive capabilities of our defense and intelligence apparatus and are an affront to our sovereignty.Finally, to ensure Israel is restrained, the president must recall and fire Amb. Mike Huckabee and all of his team members. Huckabee and his team have blatantly shown more allegiance to Israel than our nation. This can’t be allowed to continue. The American people have spoken loud and clear and rejected this war. President Trump just has to have the courage to end the war, restrain Israel and put America first.

[Category: Iran, Pete-hegseth, Enewsletter, Israel, Iran-war]

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[l] at 11/5/26 10:05pm
The humanitarian ceasefire in Oleshky, Ukraine, mediated by First Lady Melania Trump and Pope Leo XIV and jointly implemented by Ukraine and Russia, is unprecedented since the start of this war in 2022. Its success and people-centered spirit also stand in conspicuous contrast to the repeated attempts by the Trump administration to end the war, which have all ended in frustrated failure. There has been pragmatic, if intermittent, engagement between Russia and Ukraine virtually since the 2022 Russian invasion, around issues like the exchange of prisoners of war and the bodies of the fallen, or the Black Sea Grain Initiative. But until October 27, 2026, no humanitarian ceasefire along the frontline had ever been successfully implemented; it had never even been attempted. The story of how Oleshky became a step on the path towards peace has twists and turns. The town on the left bank of the Dnieper River was occupied on the first day of the 2022 Russian invasion. Later that year, after Russian forces withdrew from Kherson city across the river, Oleshky became a staging point for Russian attacks and a target of Ukrainian drones and shells, with civilian populations on both sides bearing the cost. Oleshky suffered from catastrophic flooding after the Kakhovka dam broke in June 2023. As drone warfare became more prominent over the course of the war, life in Oleshky turned into hell. Ukrainian drones and Russian mines left the only road impassible. Food and medicine became scarce, and civilians could no longer leave — a problem other frontline communities on both sides still face today.In early 2026, a campaign by Ukrainian activists to “save Oleshky” began to gather steam in Western media. The campaign was vague on how exactly Oleshky ought to be saved; it did not specify evacuation and humanitarian deliveries and instead joined the wider chorus for greater military support for Ukraine. Yet it succeeded, if not quite as intended, because in September, Melania Trump was moved to help Oleshky’s population, in addition to facilitating the return of Ukrainian children from Russia, which she has been working on for a year. News of the first lady’s efforts were initially met with skepticism and even panic by those who had headlined the campaign to “save” the town, including in Western media: it was supposedly a grubby PR move by Trump (the president presumably, not Melania) or Russia, or yet another Russian ruse to kidnap more Ukrainians and redeploy their own forces. If the ceasefire had been intended as PR, it worked. It worked for Ukraine, whose commissioner for human rights, Dmytro Lubinets, displayed exceptional professionalism, panache and love of country over four days of video messages from Russian-occupied territory, Russia proper, Belarus (serving as a transition hub for Oleshky residents moving to unoccupied Ukraine), and ultimately Ukraine. The Ukrainian military conducted complex negotiations with their Russian counterparts to implement a wide-ranging and almost perfectly-observed ceasefire in an otherwise messy warzone. Evacuated Ukrainians, wrapped in their flag, broke down crying as they hugged long-separated family members. It worked for Russia, too. High Commissioner for Human Rights Yana Lantratova (not long ago sanctioned by the U.S. and Europe) led a fleet of gleaming new buses, specialized ambulances and even cages for evacuees’ pets, accoutrements that were much unlike the usual, chaotic frontline evacuations run by volunteers in their ramshackle vehicles. She also displayed courtesy to her Ukrainian counterpart, including nodding along while listening to Lubinets speak Ukrainian, a detail that will not have escaped any Ukrainians watching. Russia’s scrupulous observation and competent execution of the ceasefire demonstrate that, contrary to received think tank wisdom, diplomacy with Russia is in fact feasibleEven if both Russia and Ukraine were only seeking to flatter Trump, it would be extremely odd if they did so in unison — sharing selfie videos, agreeing their talking points and nodding along to each other’s statements. There is more to the Oleshky ceasefire: if both sides came away looking good, it was because they did a very good thing, and they did it well.The competent, disciplined implementation of this ceasefire and humanitarian mission throws a new light on the war-ending diplomacy pursued by the Trump administration for the last one-and-a-half years. Trump and his negotiators have never succeeded in silencing the guns. They have not been able to bring together the Russian and Ukrainian sides for the kind of constructive collaboration that delivers results, let alone for joint execution of complex humanitarian operations. The Trump administration’s diplomacy has consisted of drawing up superficial outlines of settlements and then presenting them mostly to Russia and only sometimes to Ukraine, demanding rapid and uncomplicated acceptance from both, so everyone can move on to more lucrative kinds of deal-making. Their approach to peace-making has been high-handed, consumed with grand bargains, unconcerned with details and annoyed with complexity. Admittedly, the administration’s peace efforts have failed for a number of reasons, not least that European leaders have acted as spoilers — something they freely admit. But U.S. negotiators have been putting the cart before the horse, drawing up outlines of final settlements and scheduling red carpet summits instead of listening to ordinary Ukrainians and attempting to address their needs, and in the process identifying humanitarian, economic and other pragmatic issues on which the interests of both sides might align.The Oleshky ceasefire began with centering the needs of the most vulnerable: residents of a frontline region facing drones, mines and shortages of supplies. Neither party had prioritized these people’s security and wellbeing over their military objectives — until now.The visuals of the operation, not least the professional chemistry between its Ukrainian and Russian leaders, were striking, but Oleshky is about something more than vibes and the emotional impact of watching long-separated families reunite. It is about a tried-and-true, if unglamorous, practice of peace-making: start with practical, not overly political issues that both sides have an interest in addressing, on which their positions are not zero-sum and diametrically opposed. Then use the resulting trust — experience of successful cooperation and rapport built between negotiators — to tackle more contentious issues. Instead of resolving the entire conflict in one fell swoop, chip away at it one small issue after another. As Ukrainians have been joking, why can’t Melania just broker more ceasefires along the whole front line, until there is nothing left of the war? The Oleshky ceasefire is an example of people-centered peacemaking, wherein the process of transforming a conflict is guided by the needs of the people affected by it and what they require to be safe, to survive and lead full lives. People-centered peace-making flips the normal logic of war — of power, violence, the demands of armies and desires of states as determined by the powerful — on its head. Diplomacy becomes about bedridden villagers and their cats, not NATO, neutrality or Europe’s security architecture. Peace deals that have come about through this kind of approach tend to be sturdier and allow for stronger post-conflict rebuilding.Since completing the mission, Commissioners Lubinets and Lantratova have both asked that First Lady Melania Trump help broker more ceasefires, so they can together build on the successful experience of Oleshky. On November 5, hosting Russian and Ukrainian officials in the White House to recognize them for their joint achievement at Oleshky, the first lady called for turning “modest beginnings” into “something extraordinary” and finding common ground “through a shared concern for the suffering of innocent people” to “brighten a path toward lasting peace.” Those who genuinely want to end this war should take note.

[Category: Russia, Peacemaking, Ukraine, Ukraine-war]

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[l] at 11/5/26 2:18pm
After being feted around Washington a mere two weeks ago, Paraguayan President Santiago Peña resigned Thursday amid ongoing impeachment proceedings over his irregular ties to a top digital bank that collapsed this week, locking out nearly half of the South American country’s population from its savings and pensions.The scandal over the now-insolvent ueno bank, which holds $850m in public funds and serves nearly 3 million customers, accelerated this week with the resignation of the country’s central bank president, former ueno executive Carlos Carvalho, as scrutiny mounted over its loans to individuals connected to Peña, who held a large stake in the bank’s parent company, Grupo Vásquez, until last year.The escalating political scandal rattles a quickly-growing economy nestled between Argentina and Brazil that has attracted foreign investors and significant Trump administration attention because of its immense hydropower resources for operating data centers; close ties to Israel and Taiwan; and eagerness to expand security cooperation with the U.S.Peña, a Trump ally and conservative economist, had for months dismissed scrutiny of ueno’s finances and conflicts of interest. Yet after the Central Bank’s intervention Tuesday, lawmakers passed legislation ordering authorities to accelerate deposit insurance payments to savers with funds trapped in ueno, whose customers have overwhelmed other lenders as they rush to open accounts and receive refunds on their deposits, sparking a nationwide crisis.Paraguayans took to the streets this week calling for Peña — the protegé of one of the country’s richest and most powerful men, former president Horacio Cartes (2013-2018), who chairs the ruling Colorado Party — to be jailed. State security forces were soon called in to repress the protests with tear gas and water cannons.Cartes, a key powerbroker who recently split with Peña and called for his impeachment, was sanctioned in 2023 by the Biden administration for "participating in corrupt activities before, during, and after his term as president, and obstructing a major international investigation into transnational crime to protect himself.” Cartes also allegedly maintained close ties with Hezbollah cells operating in the country's tri-border area with Argentina and Brazil, where Cartes' companies — themselves sanctioned in 2024, leading to the expulsion of U.S. Ambassador Marc Ostfield in retaliation — have been involved in money laundering for the multi-billion-dollar illicit cigarette trafficking business. Paraguay has long been considered among the world’s most crime-ridden and corrupt countries.Last October, Cartes’ sanctions were suddenly removed and his business empire delisted by the Treasury Department following a multipronged and largely unreported lobbying campaign carried out by a loyal Cartes lawmaker, Gustavo Leite. He had been appointed Paraguay’s ambassador to Washington in 2025 and has since returned to the capital, Asunción, after securing Cartes’ visit to the U.S. and meetings with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau this July. The stunning removal of sanctions on Cartes would have flown completely under the radar if three Democratic senators had not condemned the move as a blatant abuse of the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act.Paraguay’s political rupture marks a stunning development for one of South America's most fervent supporters of Israel and a setback for the Trump administration’s aggressive push to restore U.S. dominance across the hemisphere, commonly dubbed the Donroe Donroe. President Peña was one of the few foreign leaders to attend Trump's inauguration, and a flurry of Trump officials and GOP lawmakers has traveled to Paraguay to bolster security and trade ties as the two countries over the past year signed a status of forces agreement, a civil nuclear energy deal, a “safe-third country” arrangement, and a deal to open an FBI anti-terror base.In the lead-up to his delisting, Cartes sought to dispel alleged Hezbollah links by traveling with Leite to Jerusalem for an anti-semitism summit at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request, shortly after Peña returned the country’s embassy to Jerusalem. Peña’s government also coordinated a series of meetings between Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and his Latin American counterparts, and formally designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations — moves that the Israeli Foreign Ministry and the State Department immediately applauded.In just over a year and a half, Rubio and Landau have spoken or met with former President Cartes, Peña or Foreign Minister Ruben Ramirez Lezcano — who last year Rubio favored to become the new Secretary General of the Organization of American States — on at least a dozen occasions, a highly atypical rate for a country of just over 6 million people.Last month, Landau traveled to Asunción, where he announced a major data center and uranium mining deal; aerial interception and border management assistance; and funds to operationalize a counter-terror center and an international narcotics and law enforcement hub.Peña’s rapid fall from power comes on the heels of the Democratic Party’s massive victory in Tuesday’s U.S. midterms elections, Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva’s surprise reelection in Brazil the week before, and plummeting approval ratings of recently elected Trump-aligned presidents across South America. These trends all point toward a shift in the regional balance of power that has produced unprecedented levels of ideological alignment across the Western Hemisphere.

[Category: Donald-trump, Paraguay, Corruption, Donroe-doctrine]

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[l] at 11/5/26 11:37am
After over four-and-a-half years of entrenched warfare, reports of U.S.-backed peace talks to end Russia's war on Ukraine are back in the news. After Finland and Norway held Europe’s first direct talks with President Vladimir Putin in a year, more trilateral talks between the U.S., Ukraine and Russia are planned for later this month.While we’ve heard tales of imminent peace time and again, here's hoping American emissaries and their counterparts can finally bring an end to the fighting.That’s because, despite considerable efforts by the U.S. and Europe to help Ukraine win this war, there is no victory in sight. While Ukrainians arguably thwarted Russian advances in its very first weeks, its backers have failed to help Ukraine consolidate its battlefield victories at the negotiating table.As a result, Russia’s invasion has slowly wrecked Ukraine: the war is Europe's deadliest conflict since World War II and Russia has seized approximately a fifth of Ukraine’s territory. After years of needless death and destruction, what will it take to actually forge an agreement to finally end this war?For the latest episode of Always at War, we spoke to Anatol Lieven, journalist, author, professor, and now Director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute to discuss his career, how he became an expert on the region, and what he thinks peace can look like there.Lieven’s diagnosis of Ukraine’s current situation is grim. He estimates that the war has killed some 200,000-250,000 Ukrainians, that millions have fled the country and are unlikely to return, and explains that the birthrate has completely collapsed. As he puts it, “the population may be half what it was in 1990.”But what’s most shocking about the dire circumstances facing Kyiv is that they were foreseeable, and perhaps even preventable. Lieven himself predicted many of the current crises over decades of analysis, from books including Russia and Ukraine: A Fraternal Rivalry in 1999, to Quincy Institute papers on the dangers of protracted war in 2022.What was true then is still true today: a compromise peace that secures Kyiv’s sovereignty and empowers Ukrainians to rebuild and return is a victory for Ukraine.As Lieven has long insisted, pretending this would be anything but a victory is foolhardy: most wars “have ended not with the complete victory of one side, but with some form of messy compromise.”Yet instead of coming to grips with the realities facing Ukraine, popular headlines continue to push narratives promising imminent victory. One possible explanation for the media’s incessant optimism is that Ukraine’s victory, understandably, feels like a moral imperative in response to Russia’s unjust war. As a result, journalists and world leaders alike are willing to indulge fantasy rather than acknowledge the gruesome truth on the ground. But Ukrainians themselves don’t have the luxury of retreating to fantasy; by a 2:1 margin, they would rather see their government prioritize ending the war as soon as possible instead of pursuing total victory.The continued refusal by many in Washington to recognize Ukrainians’ appetites for peace, and the realities on the ground informing them, constitute a noble lie to oneself, one’s readers, or one’s constituents. It’s a lie that’s gone too far.

[Category: Russia, Diplomacy, Vladimir-putin, Ukraine-war]

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[l] at 11/5/26 6:23am
There is no debate as to why Donald Trump and the Republican Party suffered a historic and humiliating defeat at the polls on Tuesday: it all comes down to the Iran war and the cost-of-living crisis it has brought about. But lost in the conversation is that this was not just a rejection of the Iran war. It was also a repudiation of the broader foreign policy that repeatedly gets the U.S. into wars — or into supporting the wars and war crimes of U.S. partners. In many contests on Tuesday, the U.S.-Israel relationship was on the ballot too, and it was rejected by Republicans and Democrats alike in favor of recentering priorities back to national interests, including ending the flow of military aid to Israel.Trump famously ran on a promise to end forever wars and not to start new ones. But he ended up listening to the Israeli Prime Minister and started a major war with Iran, even though a diplomatic deal was on the table that was objectively stronger than President Barack Obama’s deal. Trump could have declared victory, but instead he listened to the Israeli government and chose to declare war. Now he is paying for it by losing his majority in Congress.But it’s not just this election. Since George W. Bush, the American public has voted for presidents — Obama, then Trump and Biden — who have promised less foreign adventurism and more military restraint. Now, with a rejection of the Gaza policy in 2024 and now Iran in 2026, wars are becoming a major, even crucial factor in their voting, according to exit polling.President Joe Biden repeatedly touted the centrality of human rights in his foreign policy. "That's why, from day one of my administration, I've taken concrete steps to put human rights back at the center of our foreign policy," he said in a speech in October 2021. But when push came to shove, Biden deferred to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and ended up funding and enabling a genocide in Gaza. A year later, voters punished the Democrats at the polls and paved the way for Trump’s return to the White House.A YouGov–IMEU Policy Project poll in January 2025 found that, of the 2020 Biden voters who chose not to vote for Harris in 2024, a plurality stayed home because of the Democrats’ Gaza policy. Axios reported that the Democrats' own internal election autopsy reportedly concluded Gaza cost them support from some constituencies.So when voters in Texas elect a candidate who proudly rejects money from the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and says that “seeing what's happening in Gaza makes me sick to my stomach as a teacher, as a Christian, as a human being,” and when voters in Michigan cheer when their Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed accuses Israel of genocide and apartheid in his victory speech, it is not just a rejection of Trump’s war; it is also a rejection of the foreign policy of Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, and Jake Sullivan.Both Trump and Biden, in various ways and to various degrees, pursued a hegemonic foreign policy that continued rather than broke with decades of militarism and deference to Israel. And both Trump and Biden’s voters have now rejected this policy paradigm, revalidating the basis for a transpartisan — or postpartisan — push for a new foreign-policy framework centered on responsible statecraft that seeks strength through peace and prosperity through coexistence.Opportunities for collaboration between Republicans and Democrats responsive to these overwhelming sentiments of the American people will be plentiful in the next two years.But the first test will be on December 11, when the current continuing resolution for federal government funding expires. Congress has an obligation now to insist on no new money for the Iran War if and when they pass another stopgap to avoid a shutdown.

[Category: Donald-trump, Joe-biden, Iran-war, Gaza-war, 2026-midterms]

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[l] at 11/4/26 10:05pm
It has long been claimed that Americans do not vote based on foreign policy, but the results of Tuesday’s midterm elections demonstrated the limits of this truism, with a large majority of voters rejecting the Iran War waged by the Trump administration.Even before the election, an October Fox News poll indicated that the Iran war and issues associated with it (inflation and gas prices) were among the top issues voters were concerned about. Exit polling published by NBC News showed 74% of voters saw the Iran war as a “crucial” or “major factor” in their vote, while 62% believed using force against Iran was the wrong decision. This apparently has come as a nasty surprise to the war’s biggest defenders and surrogates, who had assured their followers that this backlash would not happen. Some have admitted their errors, but many have not, and that split has rapidly produced a circular firing squad, with neocons aggressively turning on those in their ranks who have conceded the war was a mistake.Will Chamberlain, senior counsel at the Article III Project, had been one of the war’s biggest cheerleaders in the conservative media world. On April 17, 2026, six weeks after Trump and Israel launched the war, Chamberlain wrote that “we’re getting the enriched uranium. We’re getting a stop to enrichment. We’re getting an end to the funding of proxies,” adding that the U.S. had “destroyed their Air Force, navy, air defenses, defense industrial base, and senior leadership.” He said that this was “all done in 6 weeks. Geopolitical masterstroke.”Asked in an April interview with The Blaze what the current Iran war would look like by the time midterms occur, Chamberlain confidently insisted that “I think in the midterms this will be kind of a mild footnote, honestly. Like I think that’s what it’ll be. I think something else will be dominating the discussion.”But after election results came in on November 3, Chamberlain finally admitted that the “Iran War is clearly catastrophically unpopular and has to end.” Chamberlain’s admission stands out from a slew of neocons who remain in denial about American public opinion on the eight-month-long Iran War, and who are attacking their own ranks for conceding the now obvious point that Americans don’t support the war and that their frustration with the conflict motivated their votes against Republicans across the country.Mark Levin, a close confidant of President Donald Trump and a fanatical supporter of Israel, had assured his audience in September that the Iran War was a “4% percent issue” for voters, stating that “whatever happens in the midterms, it doesn’t appear that Iran is going to drive anything one way or another.” Ben Shapiro, another Israel Firster, replied, “I think that’s exactly right.”Weeks later, seemingly sensing the looming GOP losses resulting from their embrace of the Iran War, Levin declared it is “not my fault!” if the Republicans were to be wiped out on Tuesday. Dismissing the economic pain suffered by American families from the war, the multimillionaire Fox News host insisted that “The vast majority of us are utterly unaffected by [the Iran War],” adding that “[If we lose], it's not because of the Iran War, it’s not because of the price of gasoline…”Iran’s restrictions on transit through the Strait of Hormuz — a waterway that was free and open every day before February 28 of this year — have sent oil and diesel prices skyrocketing, causing price hikes at the gas pump and increasing costs for Americans through the entire agricultural and transportation supply chains. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, estimated to NBC News in July that the Iran War has already cost the average American household at least $1,200 more than if the war had never started. Pro-Israel Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who turned against the war after initially supporting it, took aim at Levin on X the morning after the election, writing that “Mark Levin is a moron. And heavily contributed to the devastating losses suffered last night by republicans.” Levin responded to Mace, calling her “one of the most mentally unhinged POS to ever be in Congress,” adding that “we lost last night for many reasons, including because of useless, self-promoting, do-nothings like you. Good riddance, crackpot.”Rebeccah Heinrichs of the Hudson Institute — a neocon think tank funded by BAE Systems, Bechtel, Boeing, General Dynamics, L3 Harris, Raytheon, Palantir Technologies, Lockheed Martin, and other defense contractors — has likewise been among the most enthusiastic supporters of military action, appearing regularly on Fox News to promote the Iran War, which can only benefit Hudson’s weapons industry donors.While war supporters like Chamberlain recognize the Iran War as a losing issue in the election, Heinrichs has doubled down on her support for it, assigning blame for the election results to officials in the government who attempted diplomacy with Iran, rather than the officials who cheered on the war effort. “Once the decision to take the fight to Iran was made, we needed to follow through and Trump should've put Sec Rubio and Adm Cooper in charge of explaining it to the electorate. Still should,” she posted on X. She commiserated on X with David Reaboi, the president of Strategic Improvisation, which is described as “a communications company focused on developing and executing impactful and flexible strategies in the national security world.”As Reaboi put it, “I dunno. Seems like not winning (Iran war) — and listening to people who advocated losing it — was the far bigger mistake.” Andrew Day of The American Conservative — who has opposed the Iran War from the start and predicted its consequences on the midterms — summarized Heinrichs’ views on X: “We didn't Iran War hard enough. We should have Iran Warred harder. Then, the Republicans would have won.”Vice President JD Vance, who has publicly supported and defended the Iran War, himself admitted Wednesday that “the reason we lost is the war,” saying that voters wanted the GOP to end the war, focus on cost of living/inflation, put America first, and change our relationship with Israel. For admitting this, Vance was attacked on X by former Israeli spokesman Eylon Levy, who said that “We are not the cause of any of your problems” and that “it is impossible to separate” those sentiments “from the multi billion dollar disinformation war waged by adversaries of the West to separate America from its ally—and from a history of scapegoating.” Another emphatically pro-Israel spokesman, Marc Thiessen, disputed Vance’s analysis, writing on X that “Trump did not say ‘the reason we lost is the war.’ He said ‘Iran was a piece of it.’ He also said ‘I did the right thing. I would have done it again’ and that ‘I’m totally convinced that my decision on Iran for the long-term good of our country and even the world was an absolutely correct one and continues to be.’ If you disagree with him say so. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest.”The staunchly pro-Israel radio host Sid Rosenberg, meanwhile, called Vance’s tweet “further proof that I could never vote for this guy for President of the United States” and questioned why “Trump would allow anyone in his administration to undermine him.” Mark Levin agreed, calling Vance’s post “stunning.”

[Category: Neocons, Mark-levin, Iran-war, 2026-midterms]

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[l] at 11/4/26 10:05pm
If foreign policy could decide an election, then 1992 upended expectations. Barely eight months after the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time, President George H. W. Bush found himself reminding Americans that he had led the USSR peacefully into history’s dustbin while also liberating Kuwait from the clutches of Saddam Hussein.“My opponents say I spend too much time on foreign policy, as if it didn't matter that schoolchildren once hid under their desks in drills to prepare for nuclear war,” said Bush during his acceptance speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention. “Over the past 4 years, more people have breathed the fresh air of freedom than in all of human history.” Foreign policy mattered to Bush. He was a combat pilot during the Second World War and later served as ambassador to the United Nations, CIA Director, and Ronald Reagan’s vice president. It mattered a lot less to voters angry about a sluggish economy and high unemployment: 73% said the country was on the wrong track in 1992. There had been a recession, so economic anxiety and anti-establishment frustration were front of mind, not a Cold War victory over Communism. The president could see Americans were moving on. His approval rating had dropped from 89% in Feb. 1991 to about 40% by the nominating convention. The surpassing importance of domestic issues was captured in a slogan coined by James Carville, the campaign manager for Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, the ultimate winner in a 3-way race against Bush and Texas billionaire Ross Perot. “‘The Economy, Stupid!’ was posted on the wall of the Clinton campaign’s Little Rock war room early in the fall to keep campaign strategists intently focused on the economic welfare of working America,” according to historian Nelson Lichtenstein. It is true that voters have usually prioritized their pocketbooks, but the historical record reveals some holes in this conventional wisdom — especially during overseas misadventures. Domestic and foreign policies are interconnected, as the Democratic landslide in Tuesday’s midterm elections demonstrated. One needn’t possess an advanced degree in international relations to see how the pointless war in the Persian Gulf is driving up fuel prices on Main Street.“Pundits tend to disaggregate domestic and foreign policy, but often they are tightly linked,” historian William Hitchcock tells Responsible Statecraft. “Even if voters say they are unhappy with inflation, they don’t always make the connection between foreign war, supply chain disruption, tariffs, and the cost of gas or beef.”“Sometimes ‘The economy, stupid’ is an easier way of saying ‘It’s foreign policy, stupid.’ They can both be right,” Hitchcock said.If the elder Bush felt unappreciated for guiding the Cold War to a soft landing, his son felt voters' scorn for prosecuting a catastrophic war of choice: the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “Perhaps the most dramatic example of a foreign-policy midterm was in 2006, as the George W. Bush administration's policy was palpably failing,” historian Carolyn Eisenberg tells RS. “The administration's claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction had been discredited, and U.S. casualties were rising with no significant improvement on the ground. New representatives were elected who had specifically run on the platform of ending the war in Iraq,” says Eisenberg. The new Democratic House majority in 2007 ultimately failed to defund the war and impose a withdrawal timeline on the Pentagon.Today, Eisenberg is an expert on the Vietnam War. In the 1960s, as an antiwar activist, she witnessed the profound influence of foreign policy on a presidential election.“The antiwar movement doomed Lyndon Johnson's candidacy and undermined Vice President Humphrey's candidacy as well. Somewhat forgotten is that Richard Nixon won the election by promising a ‘secret plan’ to end the war,” Eisenberg tells RS. “In the 1970 midterm elections, a growing number of strong antiwar candidates were elected to Congress, among them Bella Abzug and Ron Dellums. Their presence in conjunction with the growing disillusionment of many Democratic and Republican incumbents produced significant pressure on the [Nixon] White House.”It took years for the pressure to produce results. With the U.S. commitment to Vietnam now well into its third decade, Congress finally made clear that war funding would end in January, 1973, without a peace agreement with Hanoi. Nixon and Henry Kissinger listened.Foreign policy continued to influence voters the following year, according to historian Brandan Buck, who studies domestic opposition to U.S. wars at the Cato Institute. In the 1974 midterms, “while Watergate and [President Gerald] Ford’s pardon of Nixon dominated the election, lingering resentment over the bombing of Cambodia and Laos, and the war in Southeast Asia more generally, played a role in the rise of the ‘Watergate Babies,’ who vocally rejected the muscular liberal anticommunism of their parents’ generation,” Buck tells RS.The salience of foreign policy is also manifest in presidents’ promises to keep the country out of conflict. Long before Donald Trump pledged "no more foreign wars," Lyndon Johnson promised not “to send American boys nine- or ten-thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”President Woodrow Wilson won reelection in 1916 using the campaign slogan “He kept us out of war.” The following April, Wilson asked Congress for a formal declaration of war against Germany. By the 1918 midterms, “progressive Republicans in the Midwest and conservatives in the Northeast successfully broke Wilson’s labor-farmer coalition, in large part due to the costs of the war at home in both economic and social terms,” Buck says. “This was particularly true in places that had large German-American constituencies, like Wisconsin, where voters reacted against an administration that had publicly questioned their loyalty.”Whatever light history shines on our current moment, it is an incontestable fact that most Americans have rejected President Trump’s “excursion” in the Persian Gulf among the many grotesqueries of his regrettable administration. “The reason we lost [the midterms] is the war,” admits Vice President JD Vance. Public attitudes intolerant of foreign adventurism were decades in the making. A quarter-century after the onset of a misbegotten global war on terrorism, millions of Americans, especially the youngest voters, are fed up with “the lack of a plausible strategy, the rapid damage to our economy, and the appalling role of Israel, abetted by the Trump administration,” says Eisenberg.“Donald Trump,” adds Buck, “originally built his populist movement, in part, by appealing to working- and middle-class voters who felt foreign adventurism came at the expense of domestic priorities. It appears that his political movement may well be dismantled by one of the exact issues that midwifed it. History is rarely that ironic.”As Eisenberg can testify from her time in the activist trenches of the 1960s, antiwar voters often do not get what they want — especially not right away. It cannot be lost on anyone that, although control of the White House and Congress passes back and forth between the two major parties in our age of unpopular “forever wars,” Pentagon budgets are as opaque and bloated as ever, the national security state is ever more intrusive at home, and the liberal internationalist project is still seeking out new monsters to destroy. As Democrats celebrate and Republicans ruminate, history suggests that, whoever wins in Washington, the people can expect more war, not peace. The question today is whether a new surge in anti-war sentiment can finally break this pattern.

[Category: Elections, Vietnam-war, Iraq-war, Iran-war, Public-opinion, 2026-midterms]

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[l] at 11/4/26 12:18pm
The largest pro-Israel group in the U.S., the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has been silent on social media since Tuesday afternoon, well before polls closed across the country and Democrats won both chambers of Congress in a blue wave, largely driven by dissatisfaction over rising costs sparked by the war in Iran. The group was an early supporter of the war and a major funder of ads attacking House and Senate candidates calling to cut off aid to Israel. It spent big on the 2026 midterm elections, dumping $84.1 million via its super PAC, United Democracy Project (UDP), and several other PACs into races that have been decided as of this writing.AIPAC might be silent today because they need to explain to their donors how nearly-two-thirds, or $55.3 million, of that spending went to races in which the group’s preferred candidate lost. A failure to achieve the desired results from two-thirds of its political spending will be a tough reality to present to donors, especially when AIPAC repeatedly claims that “being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics.”AIPAC’s failures to deliver results for its donors stands in sharp contrast with the 2022 midterm election, in which 69% of UDP’s expenditures went to races where it got its preferred result, and 2024, in which 87% of its spending went to races where the group notched wins.UDP’s two biggest races were massive losses for the group and its donors, eating up $37.78 million in spending. In Michigan, UDP spent $31.47 million in a failed effort to prevent Democratic Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed’s primary and general election victories.The next biggest spending target was an effort to prevent Daniel Biss’s primary victory over Laura Fine in Illinois’s 9th congressional district. UDP ultimately spent $6.31 million in the failed effort.The largest successful investment by the group came in Maryland’s 5th congressional district, where the group scored a win with $5.73 million in support of Adrian Boafo in the Democratic primary.UDP also incurred costly losses in Illinois’s 7th congressional district, where the group spent $5.03 million, most of it dedicated to boosting the candidacy of Melissa Conyears-Ervin in a failed primary bid; it also lost $4.92 million in an unsuccessful effort to support Melissa Hernandez and oppose Aisha Wahab in the August 18 special election runoff in California’s 14th congressional district.AIPAC’s silence in the wake of these stinging losses represents a challenge for their fundraising as well as for the future of pro-Israel influence in elections. Vice President JD Vance laid blame for Republican midterm losses squarely at the feet of cheerleaders for the Iran war and those seeking a continuation of a status-quo U.S.-Israel relationship.In a Wednesday morning tweet, Vance reported that a prominent pollster told him that “a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats.”He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were: 1) End the war 2) Focus on cost of living/inflation 3) Put America First 4) Change our relationship to Israel Vance went a step further, acknowledging, “The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.”AIPAC, one of the first groups to commend Trump’s initiation of the war on February 28, now faces the challenging task of soliciting their donors for more funds to back pro-Israel candidates in 2028 even while the group’s core issues — maintaining unconditional U.S. support for Israel even as it pursues deeply unpopular wars in Gaza and Iran — emerged as toxic for Republicans, who suffered a devastating midterm loss.

[Category: Israel-lobby, 2026-midterms, Abdul-el-sayed, Iran-war, Aipac]

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[l] at 11/4/26 9:29am
Wednesday morning, as Democrats celebrated one of the largest midterm blowouts in decades, Vice President J.D. Vance struck a somber tone. “The reason we lost is the war,” Vance wrote on X, referencing the Iran conflict the Trump administration launched in February of this year. “If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so,” he continued. “But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.”While Vance has long hinted at skepticism toward the Iran war, the comments represent an unusually clear criticism by a vice president of his own president’s policy. The statement suggests Vance sees a need to distance himself from the conflict in hopes of bolstering his future political fortunes, particularly ahead of a likely run for president in 2028.President Donald Trump acknowledged Tuesday that Iran “was a piece of it” but insisted that he “did the right thing. I would have done it again.”Indeed, there is little doubt that the Iran war played a decisive role in the Democrats’ dominant performance on Tuesday. According to exit polls, 74% of voters saw the Iran war as a “crucial” or “major” factor in their vote.In his post, Vance said he spoke with a pollster on the verge of the election who said voters who flipped from Trump in 2024 to Democrats in 2026 cited four key issues above all: ending the war, focusing on cost of living, putting America First and changing our relationship with Israel.“Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats,” he wrote.Trump himself appeared to concede that his support for Israel was hurting Republicans by announcing yesterday that the U.S. would stop providing military aid to Israel at the end of 2026.Initial speculation indicated that Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio, who largely avoided campaign events during the midterm elections, has come out looking stronger for 2028 than Vance, who was closely tied to the campaign. “There's one winner tonight on the Republican side, and that's Marco Rubio,” former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) told Fox News Wednesday.Analysts speculated that Rubio could reverse Democratic gains in Latino communities, which helped propel Democratic candidates to victories in Texas and in several Florida House seats. “There is only one name who can save Republicans in 2028,” said Andrei Roman of AtlasIntel. “That name is Marco Rubio.”It remains unclear how the elections will affect Trump's determination to continue the war in Iran. As Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute wrote in RS Wednesday, there is reason to believe the president will now seek escalation because of "the urgency borne out of a closing window for escalation, Trump’s own desire for vengeance, and reduced political pressure to push down gas prices by securing a deal."

[Category: Israel, Iran-war, Jd-vance, 2026-midterms]

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[l] at 11/3/26 10:25pm
As much as the Iran war is the key reason Trump and the GOP were crushed tonight, it is important to recognize that the pressure for war is now likely to increase.This does not mean that Trump will restart the war. But the balance of pressure for and against war will likely favor escalation.Trump was under a degree of pressure to strike a deal before the midterms, hoping to soften the blow in the polls. But now that the midterms are over, that pressure will dissipate somewhat. Gas prices are still high, but the political cost has already been paid. There won’t be another point on the political calendar for some time when that cost can be exacted again.But two other factors will intensify.First, pro-war elements in Israel and in Washington will see the next two months as the last period in which Trump has wide maneuverability to restart the war. By January, the Democrats will control both chambers, will control the purse, and can begin impeaching Trump’s secretaries, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. While Trump’s freedom of maneuver will not be completely constrained, it will be significantly reduced.In fact, it could happen sooner, given that current government funding expires on December 11. Democrats can push to ensure that any subsequent funding or authorization legislation prohibits war funding. As Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has pointed out, the Vietnam War only ended after Congress refused to continue funding it.This will compel war supporters to dramatically increase their pressure on Trump to restart the war in the coming weeks, before Congress imposes itself on Trump.Secondly, while Trump’s decision to start the war in February was driven by hubris and criminally erroneous Israeli advice, another emotion may dominate his thinking going forward: vengeance.There has been a vindictive element to his calculations in the past weeks because of his anger over how Iran — in Trump’s mind — has ruined his presidency. That anger must be going through the roof tonight.If talks in Doha do not produce a breakthrough in the next few days, then the risk of escalation in the coming weeks will increase due to the urgency borne out of a closing window for escalation, Trump’s own desire for vengeance, and reduced political pressure to push down gas prices by securing a deal.

[Category: 2026-midterms, Midterm-elections, Iran, Donald-trump]

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[l] at 11/3/26 10:14pm
Democrats secured an overwhelming victory in the midterm elections on Tuesday in a stunning rebuke to President Donald Trump’s first two years in office, winning majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives. By midnight Democrats flipped six Senate seats — including in reliably red states like South Carolina, Texas, and Kansas. As of this morning, they added Michigan and Maine.In a rare inversion of historical trends, foreign policy played a serious role in the results of Tuesday’s midterm elections. Exit polling showed 74% of voters said the Iran War was a “crucial” or “major” factor in their vote.Exit polling also found that 62% of voters believed using military force against Iran was the “wrong decision.” This all jibed with polls leading up to the midterms. Gallup reported last week that 77% of registered voters considered the situation in Iran “extremely” or “very important” to their vote, placing it among the top issues surveyed, alongside the economy and healthcare. A late-October NetChoice/Echelon Insights poll of six swing states found that “ending the war with Iran” was voters' third most commonly-cited priority, behind only the cost of living and jobs."It's the war stupid," Stand Together's Reid Smith quipped Tuesday night as results started coming in.The political impact extends beyond those who explicitly identified the war as a priority. The other top issues that consistently rank above the war itself — namely concerns related to the cost of living — have been exacerbated by the war, making it difficult to untangle foreign policy questions from economic concerns. “Foreign policy shapes voters’ lives every day, whether it’s the extra $20 they spend filling up their tank or the higher grocery bill that comes when diesel costs push up the price of shipping food,” Ryan O’Donnell, executive director at the progressive polling firm Data for Progress, told RS in an email. In the group's polling, he added, launching the war in Iran topped the list of Trump administration policies that most concerned voters.The war and its economic consequences are “the biggest story of the election,” Amber Duke, editor-in-chief of right-leaning news outlet Daily Caller, told RS on Tuesday, “As I talked to voters and GOP consultants in the months leading up to this election, it was clear that this was going to have a big impact on turning out reliable Democrat voters, pushing independents and moderates to Democratic candidates, and suppressing GOP enthusiasm.” The war's fallout reaches red AmericaMany Republicans recognized that the war and the economic fallout were likely electoral losers for the incumbent party. Some tried to split the difference by calling for a rapid end to the war while continuing to support President Donald Trump.Democrats in Iowa, South Carolina, and other typically Republican states latched onto Trump’s winning 2024 message of “America First” in an effort to claim the antiwar mantle and blame Trump’s war for the affordability crisis. The economic fallout from the war has been particularly acute in rural America, where soaring fuel and fertilizer prices have become a major preoccupation for farmers. Some of the most farming-depending states, including Iowa, Texas, Kansas, and North Carolina, flipped from Republican to Democrat on Tuesday. Rep. Ashley Hinson, the GOP nominee for Iowa's open Senate seat, sought to distance herself from the conflict by calling for a swift end to the war while continuing to support Trump and insisting that she had confidence in his ability to conclude the war militarily if necessary. The Associated Press called the race for Democratic nominee Joshua Turek late on Tuesday night, with the state representative leading by nearly 5 percentage points with 91% of votes counted. In North Carolina, a swing state that Trump carried by just over three points in 2024, Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley took a different approach. He eventually acknowledged that the war was hurting North Carolina farmers but maintained two weeks before the election “the Iran war ends when Iran agrees to not build a nuclear weapon.” Sitting Governor Roy Cooper defeated Whatley easily in a race that top GOP super PACs stopped spending on in October. For some Republican strategists, the race recalled an earlier political miscalculation. Liz Mair, a Republican political strategist who backed a hawkish primary challenger to Republican Rep. Walter Jones in 2008 when the Iraq war was at its height, recalled assuming that military voters in Jones's North Carolina district would favor the more hawkish candidate. Instead, Jones won comfortably.“A hell of a lot of Republican voters were sour on the war,” she told RS, about that race in a state with one of the nation’s biggest military populations. “Military and veterans weren't uniformly where young consultant Liz assumed, and a tough lesson was learned -- though apparently not by 2026's GOP politicians,” she noted.Duke fears that these lessons will not be learned by Republican party politicians and the establishment media ecosystem any time soon. “Many neoconservatives and Iran War hawks are taking zero accountability for cheering the president on in this war and insisting it would have zero electoral ramifications,” she told RS. “Those of us who warned this was a bad idea since February might feel vindicated, but having an honest conversation about foreign policy in the conservative movement will be difficult when the loudest voices refuse to state the obvious.”Foreign policy fractures Democrats in MichiganOne of the most closely watched Senate races pitted former Republican House Rep. Mike Rogers against public health administrator Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. The race took a dramatic late turn Sunday when Rep. Haley Stevens — who lost a close, bruising primary contest against El-Sayed — endorsed Rogers after earlier endorsing El-Sayed and pledging to vote for him as recently as last Thursday.According to early Wednesday morning reports, El-Sayed was declared the winner 52%-46% with 95% of the votes counted.Much of the disagreement during the primary campaign concerned the U.S.-Israel relationship and the role of pro-Israel lobby groups in American politics. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s largest super PAC spent a record-breaking $30.6 million during the primary in an effort to defeat El-Sayed. Super PACs linked to AIPAC later spent at least $12.7 million against the Democratic nominee in the general election. The last-minute crack-up between the Democratic candidates appeared driven in part by an ad, recently circulated by an independent supporter of El-Sayed’s, that blamed U.S. support for Israel for rising grocery prices. In an interview with CNN after her reversal, Stevens wondered why El-Sayed had an “obsession” with “overseas” countries.The Michigan contest suddenly pitted two visions of Democratic foreign policy against each other. For some, the result reflected a broader desire for the party to reckon with the failed U.S. approach to the Middle East. “Anybody trying to say that foreign policy, the Gaza genocide, and particularly the Iran war haven't been decisive issues, is incompetent,” Bhavik Lathia, a Democratic strategist who worked as the battleground mobilization director on Kamala Harris's 2024 presidential campaign, told RS. Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, Lathia said, energy among Democratic voters felt higher than it had been two years ago, when Harris attempted to prove her foreign-policy bona fides by campaigning with people like former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, a staunch defender of Israel and, like her father, a proponent of an interventionist foreign policy. “All of the kind of ridiculous hawkish posturing we did as a campaign, honestly, it killed a lot of momentum we had,” he said. Whether Democrats can or will translate these electoral gains to try to make major changes to U.S. foreign policy is an open question. But voters certainly delivered a resounding rebuke to a Republican Party that stood behind Trump’s war in Iran.“The Iran War is the greatest political blunder in the last two decades at least,” conservative commentator Matt Walsh declared on X. “A catastrophically stupid decision.”This story has been updated to reflect new results

[Category: Donald-trump, Iran-war, Elections, Public-opinion, Democratic-party, Republican-party, Gas-prices, 2026-midterms]

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[l] at 11/3/26 11:04am
Last updated at 11:00 PM EST — This discussion now closed. See our main round-up, "It's the War Stupid," with results and analysis here. As voters head to the polls Tuesday, Republicans are bracing for a defeat that could leave both chambers of Congress in Democratic hands. Survey data suggests the GOP’s precarious position, which came after a huge swell in Republican support in 2024, comes down to two related issues driving voters to the polls: prices are high, and the Middle East is burning. The question now is whether voters will hold Republicans across the country accountable for President Donald Trump’s controversial foreign-policy agenda, including tariffs and the war in Iran, both of which have driven up costs in the grocery store and at the pump. The polls certainly look promising for the Democrats, who are favored to pick up Senate seats in such typically red states as Kansas and Texas, according to Nate Silver’s “FLIPR” forecast. As of Tuesday morning, Silver, VoteHub, and RealClearPolitics all projected a Democratic sweep of the House and Senate.Follow along with us to get the latest on how the cost of living and the Iran war are affecting today’s election. Responsible Statecraft will update this page regularly as exit polls and results start rolling in.Reporter: 'finger pointing' in White House has begunPosted at 11:00 PM ESTAs we said below, the Democratic wave and growing evidence that the Iran War propelled much of it is spurring recriminations across social media. Apparently it's begun in the White House too. Wall Street Journal reporter Alex Ward on X: People close to President Trump are blaming the Iran war for widespread Republican losses on Tuesday night. Some WH officials and GOP allies said the midterm elections would have looked very diff if the war wrapped up months ago. Fingerpointing inside admin has begun.The president does seem to be affected, however, putting out this Truth Social post blaming the Republicans' bad night on the fact that he wasn't on the ballot. He might have a hard time on Wednesday morning convincing even his base of that one. "Telling people not to care about gas prices or affordability because communism or Islam is a losing strategy primarily because they know you made an entirely voluntary decision to launch a war that created those problems. You can't insult your voters into turning out," posted Auron McIntyre, columnist and podcast co-host at The Blaze.Even the most unreconstructed Iran War promoters are starting to look inward tonight. Will Chamberlain: "Yeah if anyone thinks they get to insulate their hobbyhorse from criticism after a wipeout like this they are mistaken. Iran War is clearly catastrophically unpopular and has to end." _____Dem ousts Darline Graham in South Carolina Senate ‘earthquake’Posted at 10:00 PM ESTDemocrat Annie Andrews will defeat Republican incumbent Sen. Darline Graham in South Carolina’s Senate race, according to NBC News, which called the flip an “earthquake.” Graham’s defeat marks a major loss for Republicans in what is turning into a dominant night for the Democrats. Graham took over the Senate seat earlier this year after her brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham, passed away suddenly. Graham drew controversy for her seeming ambivalence about the details of the job. In a debate earlier this year, when asked about Taiwan and the South China Sea, she pleaded ignorance, saying “national security is not my thing.” Trump boasted in August that Graham would do “what the military wants, and really, what the president wants.” As Jack Hunter wrote in RS earlier this week, “Democratic Senate candidates in the state don’t tie Republicans. But against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s war and escalating energy and food prices, all bets appear to be off.”———'Panicans' getting the last laugh? Posted at 9:35 PM ETThere is a growing chorus of voices on X slamming hawks, neoconservatives, and MAGA influencers who were saying all the way through September that only “panicans” on the right were worried about the toll the Iran War would have on the coming midterms. Turns out 62% of voters think the Iran War was "wrong"; 74% say the war was a “crucial” or “major” factor in their vote, according to exit polls tonight.Marc Theissen is getting the brunt. A major pro-war influencer writing for the Washington Post, he once tweeted that there would be “no downside” to attacking Iran last spring. "It’s time for the Washington Post (and Trump) to get rid of the most ignorant man writing about US Iran policy," posted Cato's Justin Logan. "Nothing to see here," the American Conservative's Curt Mills snarked, pointing to a graph showing voting preference averages literally flipping from Republicans to Democrats since the war was launched in February. "It's the war stupid," Stand Together Reid Smith quipped. "If the Democrats take the House and Senate, the people who cheered on the Iran war will blame everything but the war. Bad candidates. Bad messaging. Bad luck. Anything but the disastrous war they sold, with Americans paying the price."Breaking Points co-host Sagaar Enjeti had only two words. "Panicans, lol." ———Early results favor DemocratsPosted at 9:08 PM ESTDemocrats have secured three early Senate victories on election night, with races in New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Georgia all called in their favor. All three wins were expected, though indications are they could prevail by comfortable margins.While the night is still young, returns elsewhere suggest Democrats could be in for an even stronger showing. In races in both Texas and South Carolina, two traditional Republican strongholds, early batches of voting show Democrats ahead. At the time of writing, with 38% of ballots reporting, Texas state Rep. James Talarico leads Republican Texas Attorney General by 58%-40%. Elsewhere, incumbent Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.) held onto her seat defeating challenger Angie in a narrow race. Also in Florida, Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz, who has been criticized by the progressive wing of his party for his staunch support for Israel and his initial opposition to supporting Iran war powers resolutions, won re-election in a distict that was re-districted in an effort to help Republican candidates. ———More than 60% say Iran war was wrong decision: Exit pollPosted at 6:58 PM ESTExit polls show that 62% of voters believe that taking miltary action against Iran was the wrong decision, according to NBC News.Among those that voted for Democratic House candidates, 95% said it was the wrong decision, compared to 22% of those that voted for a Republican. Just over three-quarters of respondents casting their votes for Republicans (77%) support the decision. The war was named as an issue "crucial" or a "major factor" in their vote by 74% of voters.In addition, exaclty half of respondents said U.S. support for Israel was "too strong." A mere 13% believed support was "not strong enough." The voter poll, which is conducted by SSRS behalf of a group of major news organizations including NBC News, found that the cost living and government corruption were the top issues for voters in the midterms this year. The poll found that most voters blamed President Donald Trump for rising prices, with roughly 60% attributing the increases to his policies and not "because of factors outside Trump’s control.”———Dems see early positive signs as first votes roll inPosted at 6:15 PM ESTThe polls have closed in Indiana and most of Kentucky, and early vote counts have started to roll in. In Indiana’s 5th district, which could be a bellwether for national results, Democratic candidate J.D. Ford got off to a hot start, earning 63.6% of votes after 52% of votes have been counted in Hamilton County. “I’ve never seen a Hamilton County early vote number that looks like this,” said NBC News election analyst Steve Kornacki. “But early vote can be deceptive,” Kornacki added, noting that the early results are largely composed of voters that cast a ballot before election day, a group that is overwhelmingly Democratic.———Can Democrats flip Senate seat in red South Carolina?Posted at 5:45 PM ESTSouth Carolina will be one of the first states with a competitive Senate race to close its polls on Tuesday, at 7pm Eastern. The results could be an early indication of how deep dissatisfaction with the war in Iran and its economic consequences runs. Though the state has not elected a Democrat to the Senate this century, recent polls have showed that the race is in virtual dead heat. Democratic nominee Annie Andrews has made affordability and rising costs a centerpiece of her campaign against Darline Graham, who was appointed to fill her late brother Lindsey's seat, before securing her place on the ballot by winning a special election in August. Andrews has also attacked her opponent for repeatedly voting to continue the war in Iran. "If voters are souring on war along with surging prices, Graham being the sister of one of the biggest war cheerleaders in modern political history is probably not a positive," Jack Hunter wrote in a preview of the race in RS earlier this week. ———Early results to watchPosted at 4:45 PM ESTThe polls close at different times depending on the state, with Kentucky being the earliest at 6pm Eastern time. A toss-up race in Kentucky’s sixth district, which includes Lexington, could offer an early indication of whether Democrats are headed for a big night.Meanwhile, voting ends at 7pm in South Carolina, where Republican Sen. Darline Graham, the sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, finds herself in an unexpectedly close contest with Democrat Annie Andrews.Tight Senate races in Texas and Kansas, both of which close most of their polls at 8pm Eastern time, will also provide some preliminary tea leaves for observers seeking to divine the national mood.———El-Sayed on Trump’s Israel aid pledge: ‘Even a broken clock can be right’Posted at 4:05 PM ESTSpeaking to reporters Tuesday about President Donald Trump’s announcement that he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed to end the U.S.’s “$4 billion a year” in aid to Israel by year’s end, Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed said, “Even a broken clock can be right twice a day.”Trump cited criticism from El-Sayed specifically as a reason for the move. RS's Kelley Vlahos wrote today that Trump "may be desperately trying to signal to Republican voters" that the GOP "is not slavishly beholden to Israel." Critics have also argued that an effort is underway to replace this aid with less transparent forms of support that would be harder to unwind. Darializa Avila Chevalier, the Democratic nominee in New York’s 13th district, said that ending military aid is “not enough” and called for a “full arms embargo” on Israel.———Ro Khanna: ‘We're gonna bring prices down by ending the war with Iran’Posted at 3:19 PM ESTSpeaking to Fox News Tuesday, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said the Iran war was Trump’s “biggest betrayal,” adding that Democrats “are gonna stop funding this offensive war.”"We're gonna bring prices down by ending the war with Iran. We're gonna bring down the gas price. We're gonna bring down diesel. We're gonna bring down food prices."———NYT: Some US officials believe Israel trying to bait Washington into warPosted at 2:46 PM ESTIn what some U.S. officials are describing as an effort to bait Washington back into war, Israel shared intelligence indicating Iran is “considering the use of chemical weapons against its adversaries,” the New York Times reported Tuesday. Israel is now framing the chemical weapon threat as “more urgent than Iran’s ambitions to develop a nuclear weapon,” the Times continued. The report comes as Trump works to defuse Democratic attacks on the Iran war and the Trump administration’s closeness with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Earlier Tuesday, Trump claimed the U.S. would cut off the $3.8 billion in annual military aid it gives Israel at the end of this year. Questions remain about whether increased military cooperation could replace the aid relationship.———CPAC Chief: Vote Republican even if you’re ‘hurting’Posted at 2:25 PM ESTOn Monday, CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp urged Kansas voters to look past their economic struggles and vote Republican anyway.“Sometimes in politics it’s not about a coronation but just cold reality. Vote Republican tomorrow even those of you who are hurting,” Schlapp wrote on X. “If you don’t it will all get much worse. Your message of frustration has been heard loudly and clearly.”The message represents a last gasp in the state, where Republican incumbent Roger Marshall is trailing in the polls to Democratic nominee Adam Hamilton. ———Don't read too much into the 'foreign policy election'Posted at 2:05 PM ESTIn a Foreign Policy piece published today, Stimson's Emma Ashford warns not to read too much into the Iran War's impact on today's midterm results. While it is true the war is one of the top reasons why Americans may be voting the way they are, it may not reflect their overall feelings about Trump's foreign policy or, importantly, what came before it.As the horse race for the 2028 presidential election kicks off in the coming weeks, you’ll hear about the ways in which the election is a wholesale rejection of the Trump administration’s foreign-policy choices. This would be an oversimplification. What voters are incensed about is the war with Iran, not necessarily Trump’s broader rejection of the old bipartisan foreign-policy consensus.Honestly, it’s not clear from polling or focus groups what it is that American voters want from foreign policy, other than perhaps less of it: a reduced role in the world and a policy that focuses on the needs of Americans. For Democrats in particular, then, overreading these midterms as a wholesale rejection of change in foreign policy is a mistake; just because voters have rejected one disastrous foreign-policy choice does not mean that they’re ready to return to the pre-Trump status quo.Read the full piece here.———Osborn: Trump has made it hard for families to keep groceries on the tablePosted at 1:34 PM ESTIn an election-day interview in Omaha, independent Nebraska Senate candidate Dan Osborn said voters are tired of seeing politicians enrich themselves as the cost of living surges.“They see the people on the top getting rich and themselves struggling more and more everyday, regardless of what you do for a living,” Osborn, who is in a neck-and-neck race with incumbent Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts, told Drop Site. “The grift is real. It’s real for people like for families like mine who are having to keep groceries on the table and gas in our tanks.”Osborn added that Trump “should not be in charge of sending our sons and daughters into a war zone.”———Mark Levin: 'Vast majority of us are unaffected by the war'Posted at 1:05 PM ESTNeoconservative radio jock Mark Levin stuck a note of lamentation in his latest episode, saying that if the Republicans lose big today, it will be due to low GOP turnout and not because Americans are turning against President Trump's policies. In fact, he charged, "we know when it comes to Iran, they had a nuclear obsession, and that had to be stopped. And as a result, you can go to bed at night, and the vast majority of us are utterly unaffected by that war."He said if Republicans lose big Tuesday, "it's not because of the Iran war. It's not because of the price of gasoline. It's because more of them (Democrats) voted than us."Unfortunately for Levin, the data doesn't bear that out. According to the latest metrics, the closing of the Strait of Hormuz after Trump launched the war in February has resulted in higher oil, diesel, and gasoline prices. American farmers have been impacted by diesel prices and shipping disruptions (in particular fertilizer components), and consumers are seeing higher prices on goods, not to mention on interest rates. Wage growth is not keeping up with inflation.Polls too have shown that the war is ahead of immigration and even crime in terms of the issues animating the vote today.———Election-day gas prices hit record highsPosted at 1:05 PM ESTGas and diesel prices both reached all-time election-day highs Tuesday, fuel analysts said. The average gallon of gasoline in the U.S. now costs $4.12, while the average gallon of diesel costs $6.28 — a roughly 50% surge since February.The rapid increase in gas prices is due almost entirely to the war in Iran, which has roiled global oil markets by largely closing the Strait of Hormuz. Polls show voters rate gas prices and the broader cost of living as two of their top issues in Tuesday’s election.While some Republicans have distanced themselves from the war, saying it needs to end, most have stuck to the Trump administration’s line about defeating the Iranian regime. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely 2028 Republican presidential candidate, said Monday that this posture could hurt Republicans going forward. “Gas is higher. It hurts people, working class people, and it's higher because of this conflict,” DeSantis, who is not running for reelection in Florida, said. “If you can't admit that to voters, then you're gaslighting them, and they're not going to listen to you on other things.”

[Category: Iran-war, Congress, Texas, Farmers, Fertilizer, 2026-midterms]

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[l] at 11/3/26 8:37am
According to President Donald Trump, he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have agreed to end the “$4 billion a year” in U.S. aid to Israel by the end of 2026.This is the first anyone has heard about this, at least publicly. It will be interesting to see how Netanyahu reacts to Trump’s seemingly impromptu announcement on FOX News’ “Fox & Friends” morning talk show Tuesday morning. The embattled Israeli leader is on the record saying he wanted another Memorandum of Understanding allocating the annual funds until tapering off at the end of “10 years.” He is also embroiled in a live leadership fight in which he may or may not lose his prime ministership. The annual $3.8 aid package does not expire until 2028.What is Trump up to here? On one hand, he may be desperately trying to signal to Republican voters on election day that his party is not slavishly beholden to Israel, as a growing clique on his right flank now alleges. Disapproval of Israel — particularly over the Iran war, which has torpedoed confidence in Trump’s ability to steer the economy — is increasing among Republicans. Claiming such a break from Israel now, even if it is just about the MOU, would be a stunning departure from the norm.Indeed, Trump told FOX directly that it's become a campaign issue. "Why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like an El-Sayed when (Israel) don't need (the aid)?" Trump said, referring to Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.On the other hand, he might be trying to hurt Netanyahu, who as mentioned above, is in the political fight for his life. His support from Trump has been a net-positive in his own elections. A sudden loss of a guaranteed $3.8 billion in annual military aid — at a time in which the nation is fighting multi-front wars, and is by all measure stretched economically — could be devastating. Security is one issue that spans all voting constituencies in Israel, and a loss in confidence could affect the horse trading for building a Likud-led governing coalition. But is it all smoke and mirrors? As we have reported on these pages, and the Quincy Institute folks have written about extensively, the Israelis and their supporters in Washington have been working to shift the aid from the MOU model to the dark labyrinth of the Pentagon contracting system. Through legislation (Section 219), Congress is trying to build a new architecture that will “accelerate the US-Israel defense technology partnership, including technology sharing, coproduction of weapons systems, and bilateral research and development across multiple domains of warfare, including biotechnology, autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, cyberwarfare, and more.” A designated executive agent will be in charge of the relationship, reducing space for Pentagon and congressional oversight. In other words, the billions in aid will still get to Israel, but in the shadows, making the relationship less politically radioactive. In addition, this arrangement could put our own military and national security at risk. Today's announcement was not lost on critics of Section 219. "If POTUS is genuinely serious about cutting off aid to Israel, he must demand that Congress remove all proposed programs that will give the Israeli defense & intelligence apparatuses unfettered access to our own defense & intelligence R&D," posted Joe Kent, who resigned from the Trump administration over its Iran War and Israel's influence in it, in March. "Protect American interests, put Americans first."Therefore, Trump’s messaging today has the hollow tang of desperation. If it is true, and he and the Israeli leader have agreed to such an dramatic move, it is even more important to ensure that Section 219 is challenged in Congress when it is raised again after the elections.

[Category: Iran-war, Benjamin-netanyahu, Donald-trump, Israel, Israel-aid, Us-israel]

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[l] at 11/2/26 10:05pm
British defense chief Wes Streeting recently said the U.K. has 1000 days to be “ready with our allies to fight and win.” The enemy is obvious: Russia. The catch: London doesn’t have the cash to fight, and ordinary folk aren’t interested. This latest reminder that war with our Slavic foes is imminent is vague and unspecified, and frankly tedious. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out nearly a year ago, “rarely a week goes by now without a European government, military or security chief making a grim speech warning the public that they are headed toward a potential war with Russia.” Streeting is simply the latest to join the chorus. Earlier in October, he advised British people to stock up on tinned food and bottled water in case of an emergency, a suggestion he has since repeated.Yet a gap is growing between this war readiness rhetoric and the reality of public finances in Britain. It is evident that the government has little fiscal headroom to increase defense spending rapidly to the NATO target of 3.5% of GDP by 2035. In his annual budget statement last week, Chancellor (and former Defense Secretary) John Healy said the 3% target would be reached “in the next Parliament,” which could be as late as 2034. Current spending plans suggest U.K. defense won’t go beyond 2.7% this decade.We can’t afford to expand our army which, at 73,500 troops, is already at its smallest since 1823, according to MoD data. There are more than 700,000 Russian troops in Ukraine alone. When discussions kicked off in March 2025 about a “coalition of the willing” peacekeeping force for Ukraine, the U.K. armed forces were considered “too stretched” to contribute without cutting back operations elsewhere. A British MP and member of the U.K. parliamentary defense select committee told me we would struggle to put 10,000 troops on the field. Nevertheless, a concerted campaign appears underway to soften Brits up for the fight. This past weekend, the Spectator put out a piece calling for the reintroduction of mandatory National Service for 18-year-olds. “What we need is a resilient, hardened and capable population, ready for the tough times ahead,” wrote Ted Jeffery. “Not a country with 10 million working-age people on benefits.” No one talks about how to pay for schemes like this, except, one assumes, to cut back on benefits. Herein lies the guns or butter faultline in British political discussion, which you can also witness in Germany and in France. The state should cut back on public services such as welfare and instead spend money on defense and war readiness. The protests and riots that have rocked France are not driven by concerns about the risk of war, but rather about the dilapidation of the school system. This past weekend has also seen riots across Germany about the cost of living. Former German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s suggestion that she would back Ukraine “no matter what voters think” helps explain why increasing numbers of Germans are turning to parties such as Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Foreign policy starts and ends at home. Ordinary folk spend little time thinking about foreign policy and assume that their governments will focus on domestic concerns. That gives elected leaders considerable scope to cut a dash on the world stage in the face of public indifference. However, it does not offer carte blanche to put foreign issues first. In Britain, the public doesn’t appear remotely interested in fighting a foreign war. A recent poll by Ipsos found that 48% of Britons would not agree to fight “under any circumstances” while only 36% might be willing. Indeed, the most interesting observation was that the age group most willing was the over 55s. This cohort might get its chance as last week the government announced it had updated its policies determining that reservists up to 65 years of age could be reactivated "to strengthen UK readiness as global threats continue to grow."The British Foreign Policy Group’s 2026 Survey also indicated that 52% of Britons would be unwilling, and 58% unable, to fight, with a similar tilt towards the older generation.The government has made some effort to persuade its citizens to change their minds. In late October, the Head of the Army, Sir Roland Walker, warned that “our citizens have got to consent to sacrifices to prioritize defense and security.” This follows on from the highly publicized remarks on GB News that pro-Russian (read pro-peace) voices should be locked up and conscription should be introduced. The latter was pure bloviation. The former, an incitement by a serving military officer to put conscription into practice. This was leapt upon by historian Peter Hitchens, who wrote that it was not for serving military officers “to put the case for sacrifices by the voting public. Nor was it for him to tell politicians to explain this to the public.” I heartily agree. British ministers and pundits never explain where we might meet the Russians in battle after we’ve been press-ganged and put into uniforms. Anyone who believes they are going to romp all the way across Europe and cross the channel to meet us here must be a fantasist. That means we either go into Ukraine, which we have steadfastly avoided doing since 2014, or we send our troops to a NATO country that is attacked, despite the lack of evidence that Russia has any intention of launching such an endeavor.A more credible, less expensive and less dangerous approach would be to engage in diplomacy to put an end to conflict, rather than allowing it to fester and worsen. With a government too poor to grow the army and with a population unwilling to fight, Britain nevertheless clings to its refusal to talk and engage in diplomacy. At the recent G20 Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Atlanta, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, beside a grinning Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski of Poland, used the plenary to lambast Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and declare “you are not winning the war”. A planned family photo, where the ministers all stand together, was canceled because the Brits and Europeans didn’t want to be in shot with Lavrov. Further proof, sadly, that statecraft in Britain and Europe today resembles a bunch of 10-year-olds squabbling in the schoolyard.

[Category: Uk, Russia, Ukraine-war, Nato, Enewsletter, United-kingdom]

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[l] at 11/2/26 10:05pm
In the wake of Brazilian incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva’s historic reelection, right-wing challenger Flávio Bolsonaro executed a daring — and likely CIA-assisted — escape to the bosom of Cuban-exile, neoconservative Miami, where he briefly proclaimed himself “president-elect” of Brazil. Within hours of his loss, the younger Bolsonaro — son of former President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2023) — was ordered to turn over his passport by controversial Supreme Court Justice Alexandre De Moraes. Reports suggest that the candidate and his family subsequently entered Argentina by land, whereupon they boarded a jet to Trump-aligned Ecuador before continuing on to Miami. Upon their arrival in Florida, Secretary of State Marco Rubio granted the family asylum, calling them victims of political persecution.Bolsonaro then published a letter on Tuesday alleging fraud and declaring himself “president-elect of Brazil”; he likewise compared himself to Venezuelan opposition leaders Juan Guaidó and Maria Corina Machado. The statement itself was riddled with reportedly AI-generated errors, including an antiquated coat of arms bearing the pre-1967 inscription: “United States of Brazil.” Within the hour, Bolsonaro republished an amended, State Department-approved text describing himself as “leader of Brazil.” Yet President Donald Trump, asked whether he recognized Flávio’s self-proclaimed victory, replied, “I won’t get involved.” In effect, Bolsonarismo — like its equivalent in Venezuela — has placed its future in the hands of the Trump administration. As with Delcy Rodríguez in Venezuela, the question then is why the U.S. president has once again spurned a MAGA-friendly opposition in favor of a nominally left-wing incumbent. Last August, the Trump administration imposed 50% tariffs on a host of Brazilian products on the grounds that the country violated the elder Bolsonaro’s human rights. (The former president was barred from seeking office and sentenced to prison time by Brazil’s Supreme Court over an attempted coup following his 2022 loss to Lula.) The surprise trade war could not have come at a more opportune moment for Lula, the incumbent president, who was languishing with record low approval ratings that have since recovered. What’s more, the tariff broadside blindsided the Bolsonaros, who previously sent Jair’s youngest son, Eduardo, to Washington to lobby for sanctions — as opposed to broad tariffs — against the Brazilian government.Defiant, the Lula government stood its ground and rallied Brazilians against the Bolsonaros and their foreign allies. Trade between Brazil and China skyrocketed, marking a spectacular own goal for Washington. Just three months later, Trump unilaterally dropped most tariffs on Brazil, with Lula citing “good chemistry” between the two leaders following a brief encounter at the U.N. Why the sudden shift? Perhaps because Brazil has much to offer Washington. In the wake of the Trump administration’s 2025 trade war with China, Beijing successfully cowed its opponent by restricting U.S. imports of Chinese rare earths. Brazil, meanwhile, has the world’s second largest reserves of rare earths, making it a potential partner for lessening U.S. dependence on the Middle Kingdom.Contrary to rhetoric in defense of Brazilian sovereignty, Lula and the governing Workers’ Party (PT) have more or less capitulated to Washington over rare earths. In April, American mining multinational USA Rare Earth announced the $2.8 billion purchase of Goias-based Serra Verde Group — at present, the owner of the only active rare earths mine in Brazil. Lula could have conceivably annulled that deal but ultimately chose not to do so. He also backtracked on plans to create a state-owned rare earths company known as Terrabras; both moves are clearly aimed at placating both Washington and Brazil’s business elite. As it stands, the country has handed the entirety of its admittedly minimal rare earth production to an American company, though a recently-passed law governing rare earth extraction stipulates domestic processing and refining of pertinent minerals.Lula, moreover, will face extraordinary domestic challenges in his fourth term. Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL) won the most seats of any single political party in the Brazilian National Congress since the 1980s, with a record 121 deputies and 28 senators. All told, Bolsonaro allies will control 124 out of 513 and 32 out of 81 seats in both houses of Congress. In the event of a crisis, it’s likely that clientelist ‘centrist’ parties that control around a third of the legislature — known as the “Centrão” — could side with the opposition and remove the octogenarian Lula from office, as occurred with former PT president Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016).Lula will also have to deal with the growing crisis of legitimacy facing Brazil’s Supreme Court. Justice Alexandre De Moraes has drawn significant backlash for allegedly exceeding his authority to persecute political opponents, mainly those affiliated with Bolsonarismo. Moraes sparked significant frustration in Lula’s camp for demanding that Flávio Bolsonaro surrender his passports within hours of losing the election; while Bolsonaro is credibly accused of serious crimes, the president’s team fears the timing has given the fugitive “a powerful justification for portraying himself as the victim of a witch hunt,” sources told Bloomberg.Both Lula and Bolsonaro campaigned on reforming the court, with the latter promising to impeach Moraes. Lula would do well to make good on these promises in the form of a grand bargain with the opposition, particularly given that Moraes is due to assume control of the Supreme Court’s presidency in September 2027. A serious reform effort would go a long way toward securing Brazil’s institutional stability in the coming term.As of this writing, four Bolsonaros are expected to join the next Congress, including Jair’s wife Michelle, brother Renato and sons Carlos and Jair Renan. Flavio’s exile has and will continue to stoke divisions on the Brazilian right over the movement’s future. PL leader Valdemar Costa Neto, evangelical pastor Silas Malafaia and popular São Paulo Governor Tarcísio de Freitas have since recognized Lula’s victory and distanced themselves from the fugitive Bolsonaro. Conservative voters, however, will likely continue to look to the Bolsonaros — Jair and Michelle most notably — for leadership.Lula’s victory marks a likely end to the current wave of Trump-aligned right-wing governments in the Americas. With some exceptions, virtually all of the leaders of the so-called Shield of the Americas are spectacularly unpopular and are likely to stoke backlash in future elections. The main challenge for Brazil’s octogenarian president will simply be getting to the end of his historic fourth term without being impeached; the president took one step in this direction already by committing to further market-friendly policies in order to appease irate investors. The White House has no doubt calculated that their interests in Brazil are reasonably secure under Lula. In the meantime, Flavio Bolsonaro will have ample time to follow in the footsteps of Juan Guaidó in Miami.

[Category: Donroe-doctrine, Flavio-bolsonaro, Luiz-inacio-lula-da-silva, Brazil]

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[l] at 11/2/26 1:26pm
Rep. Haley Stevens’s surprising decision to abandon the Democratic Party and endorse Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate running for Senate in Michigan, was widely interpreted as a slap across the face to Michigan Democrats, who chose Abdul El-Sayed over Stevens to run as their party’s candidate in the general election. Speculation about Stevens’s erratic behavior — endorsing El-Sayed and then shifting her endorsement to Rogers less than 48 hours before Election Day— has centered on the role played by her new, and allegedly controlling, fiance, Jason Turkish. But if political journalism has one rule, it’s “follow the money.” And in this case, there’s a lot of money, and it points to the role of a lobby for a foreign country.Stevens may have gone a step too far for Democrats by endorsing a Republican, but her actions were entirely in line with the pro-Israel donors who had supported her candidacy.The Michigan Democratic Senate primary race was exceedingly expensive, even by the standards of modern American elections, and most of that funding went to supporting Haley Stevens against Abdul El-Sayed. The money largely came from out of state, and much of it came from outside the Democratic Party. The unifying factor was that pro-Israel megadonors wanted to boost her campaign against El-Sayed, a candidate who openly criticized Israel and the ways in which U.S. aid to the country was instrumental in Israel’s war on Palestinians in Gaza, which numerous leading human rights groups have deemed a genocide.Pro-Israel super PACs spent more than $30 million for TV and social media ads supporting Stevens and attacking El-Sayed, and in most cases they avoided any mention of Israel. This approach was a tacit admission that their core issue was toxic with Democratic voters, nearly three-quarters of whom oppose providing additional economic and military support to Israel.Stevens, who is not Jewish, once said “I see Israel in my dreams,” and emerged as the model staunchly pro-Israel candidate for Israel’s lobby but not for Michigan Democrats, where she lost to El-Sayed in August. That’s where the story could have ended, but Israel’s lobby wasn’t done just yet. The lobby, driving home the message that it isn’t wedded to either the Democratic or Republican Party, backed Rogers in the general election, doubling down on its efforts to defeat El-Sayed, having failed in its attempt to influence the Democratic primary. If Stevens dreamed of Israel, Rogers was living the dream. Drop Site reported on Sunday that his campaign spokesperson Abby Ronson and communications staffer Jesse Stokes are both registered agents for the state of Israel. In short, his campaign isn’t just benefiting from pro-Israel political spending; it is staffed by individuals who are also doing contract work to spread pro-Israel messaging. Stevens’ Sunday decision to rescind her endorsement of El-Sayed and back Rogers took the political world by storm. Effectively switching parties within 48 hours of a consequential election is not normal behavior, and Stevens’ supporters, as well as Stevens herself, had emphasized her commitment to a Democrat winning the Michigan Senate race in November, whether it was Stevens or El-Sayed. Stevens, who had previously attacked Rogers as a “rubber stamp for Donald Trump's dangerous agenda," is now publicly appearing with Rogers and offering her endorsement to the man she had warned Michigan voters about.The Democratic establishment responded with surprise and anger. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, himself a staunchly pro-Israel Democrat, called Stevens' move a "despicable betrayal.” The swift closing of ranks around El-Sayed — unprecedented public support for El-Sayed that many mainstream Democrats had avoided offering until last weekend — seemed to only be made possible by Stevens’ unseemly defection to the Republican Party. Stevens’ behavior, meanwhile, is entirely consistent with what the party’s leadership had already signaled. Speaking to The New York Times last year, Schumer explained that “My job is to keep the left pro-Israel.” Schumer and other senior Democrats were silent as millions of dollars poured into the Michigan Democratic primary from out-of-state and out-of-party sources to attack El-Sayed on behalf of Israel’s lobby.Stevens’s decision to explicitly switch sides cost her the public support of her party, but it was also a logical decision to follow the special interest money that had backed her in her failed race in August, as those same donors shifted their focus to backing Rogers in the general election. It’s also the message sent by Schumer and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who attacked El-Sayed and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s criticisms of Israel as “wrong” and not “a reflection of the Democrats in the Congress.” For those who find all this distasteful, consider that Israel’s lobby has spent nearly a quarter-of-a-billion-dollars on this election alone. Stevens’, Schumer’s, and Pelosi’s behavior comes along with unprecedented special interest spending on behalf of a foreign country that is deeply unpopular with Democratic voters.Preventing the transmission of public opinion into public policy is the lobby’s core mission in this election, and the cost of building that obstruction is reaching unprecedented heights. Stevens’ behavior over the past day offers insights into what is expected of pro-Israel candidates: turning their backs on their party and their voters in favor of prioritizing the narrow interests of a country 6,000 miles away.The first step to combatting the corrupting influence of pro-Israel political spending is to talk openly about the role of Israel in our elections. To not do so is to invite pro-Israel money to continue shaping the actions of candidates in both parties at the expense of their parties and constituents.

[Category: Israel, Midterm-elections, Israel-lobby, Michigan, Haley-stevens, Abdul-el-sayed, Enewsletter]

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[l] at 11/1/26 10:05pm
The Houthis’ lightning advances in Yemen have given Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates an opening to set aside their differences after a notable rupture over the country’s political makeup less than a year ago.However, even if a unified threat manages to bind them together, their unresolved disagreements over the future of Yemen could limit the effectiveness of renewed military cooperation against the Houthis and deepen fragmentation elsewhere in Yemen.At least for now, both countries have signaled a willingness to compartmentalize their disputes. Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman’s meeting with UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed on October 18 provided a public indication of renewed dialogue, with bin Salman praising the “historical relations between our two brotherly countries.”The official readout did not announce a Yemen military agreement, but the Guardian separately reported that Abu Dhabi had agreed to resume payments to government-aligned forces it had previously backed in southern Yemen, a region where it has long sought influence. In exchange, Saudi Arabia’s air force would provide support for those forces against the Houthis. Further details of Emirati involvement remain scarce. But numerous prominent Saudi and Emirati media outlets have published conciliatory commentary following the recent meeting, emphasizing the shared benefits of cooperation and calling for an end to public feuding.The shift in tone signals an effort to sideline the December 2025 rupture in relations, which saw UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces capture large parts of the Hadramawt and al-Mahra provinces bordering Saudi Arabia.The advance, which Riyadh viewed as a direct threat to its national security within its southern neighbor, triggered severe public recriminations. It also led to a Saudi-led airstrike on a weapons shipment at Mukalla port that it said had arrived in support of the STC, and an abrupt demand for the remaining UAE forces to leave Yemen, along with the severe weakening of the STC.That confrontation exposed competing visions for Yemen that had strained their intervention from the outset.Although both led a war against the Houthis, known officially as Ansar Allah, starting in 2015, Riyadh backed the internationally-recognized government, while Abu Dhabi cultivated southern armed groups, including the separatist STC.The Saudis wanted a unified government capable of defeating the Houthis, while the UAE prioritized advancing southern Yemen’s independence via the STC in a bid to gain control over ports, including Aden, which lies near the mouth of the Red Sea.Those differences flared up in 2019, when STC and government forces fought for control of Aden, until a marriage of convenience saw Riyadh and Abu Dhabi unify these factions into a fragile power-sharing agreement.Nevertheless, describing this simply as Saudi support for the internationally-recognized government against Emirati support for separatists would obscure both countries’ reliance on myriad local armed partners. Those relationships offer Abu Dhabi a means of re-engaging without returning its own forces to the battlefield.The UAE is unlikely to fight the Houthis directly as it did in the previous stage of the war. The Houthis had previously struck Emirati territory, notably in 2022, showcasing the risks for the UAE, whose economy relies on projecting an image of a secure commercial oasis in an otherwise turbulent region.And having already faced intensive Iranian missile and drone attacks since the U.S. and Israel launched their war against Iran, Abu Dhabi may be more inclined to limit its role to supporting local anti-Houthi factions, particularly given the Houthis’ markedly improved strike capabilities.Still, even though Emirati involvement in Yemen would likely prove secretive, it could play a critical role in the coalition.Abu Dhabi has built influence through relationships with capable local militias – including the Giants Brigades and Tarek Saleh’s National Resistance Forces – and a wider network of commercial and security interests. Although some major Emirati-backed factions merged into the Saudi-led military structures in Yemen following Abu Dhabi’s withdrawal of direct funding last year, residual command networks and personal loyalties remain intact.Therefore, Abu Dhabi maintains significant leverage, which it can tap into by rapidly reactivating financial and logistical support. The question is whether it will use that power to boost the coalition or counter Riyadh, including by constraining its options in the south.Indeed, the real danger is that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi will each maintain their own channels of influence and back parallel structures that end up causing fractures in territories beyond Houthi control.Beyond geostrategic differences, there are potential ideological clashes. One longstanding source of friction is the Islamist Islah party, which is allegedly tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. Despite both governments’ hostility towards the Muslim Brotherhood, Riyadh has maintained relationships with Islah politicians within the internationally-recognized government.Abu Dhabi, meanwhile, has seen no room for compromise. The UAE has reportedly even hired mercenaries to assassinate the faction’s leaders.As long as Riyadh insists on working with Islah as a pragmatic means of strengthening the anti-Houthi coalition, this disagreement alone may hinder the level of support that Abu Dhabi will provide for government-backed forces.Agreement on confronting the Houthis therefore does not necessarily extend to agreement on which Yemeni actors should be empowered.Disagreements over who should govern Yemen could also complicate decisions about how to fight the Houthis and on what terms to negotiate. Since the U.N.-brokered ceasefire in April 2022, Riyadh has spent years seeking a negotiated exit from Yemen’s war, but the renewed Houthi attacks on Saudi territory — including deadly strikes on the Riyadh airport and attacks on oil infrastructure — have shown the limits of its containment policy, which aims to check Houthi advances without a return to full-scale war.Regional factors matter too. Saudi Arabia has already called on Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt for defensive support against Houthi strikes, in line with the Mecca Defense Alliance, signaling that it is looking beyond its traditional reliance on the UAE.That could deepen divisions and suggest that Riyadh increasingly views its alliance with Abu Dhabi as less essential. Meanwhile, divisions among various anti-Houthi groups remain deep. Southern factions are still divided over independence, autonomy, the distribution of power and their relationship with the rest of the country, reflecting longstanding tensions that predate Yemen’s unification in 1990.Ultimately, any Saudi-UAE military coordination will remain fragile so long as the two Gulf powers continue to pursue conflicting endgames for Yemen.The real test is whether any renewed cooperation yields accountable financing, coherent command structures and a political process that genuinely includes Yemen’s competing factions.Without those elements, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi may very well end up assembling a coalition that will fight the Houthis today but crumble tomorrow, further fueling the instability that has long plagued Yemen.

[Category: Saudi-arabia, Yemen, Houthis, Stc, Uae, Enewsletter]

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[l] at 11/1/26 10:05pm
Solid red South Carolina hasn’t elected a Democratic senator this century. But in the race between Republican Darline Graham and her Democratic challenger, it’s now a draw.The New York Times called the race a toss-up on Wednesday, with Graham, the sister of the late Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, and Democrat Annie Andrews both receiving 48% in their latest poll. Fox News made the same call on Thursday.Democratic Senate candidates in the state don’t tie Republicans. But against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s war and escalating energy and food prices, all bets appear to be off.“It’s a f***ing train wreck,” said Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) of the race on Wednesday. “It’s a mess.”Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, after calling the political circumstances “absurd,” noted how Trump has campaigned three times in the state, twice in one week. It is unusual for Republicans, let alone a Republican president, to have to actively campaign here to firm up votes. “I think it's crazy…It should be an absolute shoe-in.” he told CNN. During one of his recent rallies, Trump called Andrews a "radical left lunatic.” Graham denounced her as “the most radical liberal candidate ever to run for office in the history of South Carolina.”“She’s just plain old bat shit crazy,” Graham claimed.“Is it bat shit to want cheaper gas and groceries?” Andrews shot back on X.As elsewhere in the country, prices are rising in South Carolina because of the Iran war, which is threatening a number of Republicans in typically safe red states. The fact that Graham was sworn in mere days after her brother’s death in July has not sat well with many voters either, inviting charges of nepotism and questions about her competence.But if prices weren’t going up and Trump and his agenda were still as popular in South Carolina as they were in 2024 or before that, it would be easier to imagine Graham getting a pass.Voters know the president who once promised no new wars is now engulfed in an eight-month-long one in Iran, something they are reminded of every time they pump gas. The state is home to eight military bases and military families have been directly affected by the war."My opponent...had the opportunity to vote to end the war. But three times in a row, she voted to continue it,” said Andrews in the only debate between her and Graham last month.“This reckless war in Iran has helped drive fuel prices to record highs,” Andrews said at a campaign stop in late September. “Darline Graham has voted multiple times to continue this war that is directly responsible for the six-dollar diesel.”“We need to lower the damn diesel,” Andrews declared.If voters are souring on war along with surging prices, Graham being the sister of one of the biggest war cheerleaders in modern political history is probably not a positive. Nor are perceptions that Graham was installed as a reliable pro-war, pro-Trump vote, just like her brother. “They don't like the idea of a puppet,” Sanford said of Graham and voters. “Somebody who, you know, do as (they’re) told by the president just because he helped drag (her)...across the finish line” during the Republican primary.When Graham clumsily said “national security is not my thing” to a question about the importance of Taiwan and the South China Sea during an August primary debate, Trump defended her gaffe: “She is going to do what the military wants, and really what the president wants.” “She understands that national security is my thing,” Trump added.That state Republicans like Mace and Sanford are griping publicly is indicative of broader frustration. Graham’s closest opponent in the GOP primary, Rep. Ralph Norman, has been urged to campaign for Graham but he still refuses. “My family is not going to vote for Darline Graham. They’re just not,” said Norman, who ran as a war skeptic. An anonymous House Republican called the competitive Senate race in South Carolina “embarrassing,” and said that Graham was “dragging Rs down the ticket,” according to NewsNation reporter Joe Khalil.Graham’s war quandary is not dissimilar to at-risk Republicans in other states, like consummate hawk Mike Rogers in Michigan, who is now lamenting that “the war with Iran needs to end and end quickly.” Like other Democrats, Rogers’ opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, presents himself as an antiwar, and like other Democrats, a real “America First” candidate. “A real America first approach, a real Iowa first approach, is let's take care of our citizens here and I would be fundamentally against the war,” said Democrat Josh Turek who is in a dead-heat race for Iowa’s senate seat against Trump-endorsed Republican Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa).Neck-and-neck poll findings do not mean the race is lost for Darline Graham, but she has already lost the confidence of many in her party. Perhaps most voters will agree.Because South Carolinians, like most Americans, like affordability. They also dislike wars that make affordability impossible, and especially those they were promised wouldn’t happen.It’s their thing.

[Category: Donald-trump, Iran-war, Elections, Darline-graham, Economy, Enewsletter, Midterm-elections]

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[l] at 11/1/26 10:05pm
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) had a dire warning for Michigan voters last Wednesday: Electing Democrat Abdul El-Sayed to the Senate could cost American lives.Speaking at a GOP campaign event in Grosse Pointe Woods, Cruz accused El-Sayed of being a “passionate supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood,” warning that if he were elected and given a seat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, “there is a very real risk that Americans will die as a result.”Several Republicans on next week’s midterm ballot spoke at the event, but Cruz reserved most of his time for El-Sayed, who is facing former Rep. Mike Rogers in the race for an open Senate seat in Michigan.Cruz’s remarks are among the harshest in an escalating campaign of attacks on El-Sayed, who could become the first Muslim to serve in the U.S. Senate. From President Donald Trump to prominent Republican lawmakers like Cruz, conservative commentators are portraying the Democratic nominee as not only a political opponent, but as a potential threat to American national security. The attacks revive a familiar strain of fear-mongering post-9/11 politics, where Muslim candidates — even non- Muslim candidates — were accused of supporting Islamist extremism and described as potential dangers to the country. This escalating barrage of criticism comes as El-Sayed and Rogers are locked in a tight race for what could prove to be a decisive Senate seat. The latest RealClearPolitics average shows the Democratic leading by 3.5 percentage points. The attacks started as soon as El-Sayed won the nomination in August, when Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) called him “a TERRORIST” and “a RADICAL ISLAMIST who will do everything he can to destroy America.”Since then, the rhetoric has only intensified. Trump has targeted him frequently, calling El-Sayed a “jihadist, who would be “the only senator that will have to go through a metal detector.” After introducing the father of a man who died on Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001, at a recent event, the president compared the Michigan Democrat to the 9/11 hijackers. A number of Republicans, including Trump and the GOP-aligned Senate Leadership Fund PAC, have said El-Sayed wants to bring “Sharia law” to the United States, recycling another common talking point from the early 2010s. (El-Sayed is not the only Muslim politicians to face similar attacks based on their religion; Tuberville’s pinned tweet highlights an image of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani next to the Twin Towers blowing up, with the caption “The enemy is inside the gates.”) One Republican Senator said El-Sayed “can be nowhere near Washington, D.C.” because he does not understand that “Jesus came here for our salvation.” Two hawkish Republican columnists took to the pages of the Daily Signal and the Wall Street Journal to emphasize Cruz's point that, unlike appointed government officials, El-Sayed, if elected, will not have to pass a background check in order to access classified materials. “Rumor has it that El-Sayed covets a seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” wrote Republican commentator Josh Hammer. “That’s a perfect perch for a senatorial fifth column.”The critics offer little explanation of how El-Sayed's election would pose a threat to national security. Republicans making the accusations have not presented evidence that he has engaged in extremist activity or would misuse access to classified information.They have largely pointed to El-Sayed’s past statements supporting Egyptian protesters against the 30-year dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak and Egypt's democratic transition in 2011 and 2012. At the time, El-Sayed argued that the U.S. should support the protesters despite the possibility of the Muslim Brotherhood taking power, which, he said, contrary to some Americans’ fears, would “look nothing like Iran.” That position was well within the mainstream at the time. The late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), for example, urged the Obama administration to do a “better job of encouraging democracy" in the Middle East, despite the “influence” of groups like Muslim Brotherhood, because “the “status quo” was destined to lead to “much more violence.” Though he remained critical of the group, McCain also met with members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt on at least two occasions and called for the release of members of the group’s leadership after they were removed from power. Critics have also cited allegations that his family has historical ties to the organization, a once-popular group in Egypt that promoted governance based on Islamic principles. Mohamed Morsi, who was the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing, briefly served as the first democratically-elected president of Egypt before his ouster in a military coup. In a recent ad, Rogers declared that “Abdul El-Sayed’s radical ideology is a threat to our national security” and has repeatedly accused him of being “connected to” the Muslim Brotherhood. During Morsi’s presidency, Rogers, then a member of the House of Representatives, said there were “moderate Muslim Brotherhood individuals we are going to have to reach out to and talk to” and voted to continue sending aid to Cairo during Morsi's presidency. Critics of this approach say framing El-Sayed, who has spent most his career as a public health administrator, as a threat to national security is an attempt to redirect attention away from the issues voters actually care about, like the economy, health care, or the ongoing war in Iran, which appear to be losing electoral issues for the Republican Party as the midterms near. As the journalist Ken Klippenstein recently wrote on his Substack, “It’s a ploy to shift the debate from concerns that the public has to that of think tank ‘experts’ and the professional commentators.”As the campaign entered its final weekend, the tendency to cast Muslims as national security risks and the desire to revive the peak of post-9/11 threat inflation had reached a new extreme. Speaking to the New York Post on Saturday, Republican National Committee press secretary Natalie Baldassarre invoked one of that era’s most recognizable symbols.“He’s a better fit for Guantanamo Bay than the halls of Congress,” she said, adding that “Michiganders should keep this jihadist as far away from power as possible.”

[Category: Abdul-el-sayed, Us-senate, Michigan, National-security, Global-war-on-terror, Mike-rogers, Donald-trump, Ted-cruz, Midterm-elections]

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