The Bottom Is Falling Out for Trump
He’s losing his war, his numbers are diving, and now he’s represented by a Democrat.
To hear Donald Trump tell it, a peace deal with Iran is basically a done deal by now—all over but the photo op. “We’ve won this. The war has been won,” he said yesterday in the Oval Office, adding that Iran had extended an olive branch in the form of “a very significant prize” that they “said they were going to give.” (He did not elaborate.)
Later, Iran rattled off its demands for peace, as the Wall Street Journal reports: the closure of all U.S. bases in the Gulf, the lifting of U.S. sanctions on Iran and financial reparations for targets bombed, permission for Iran to keep its missile program, security guarantees against further attacks both on Iran and on Hezbollah in Lebanon, and a new permission structure for the Strait of Hormuz that would allow Iran to collect fees from ships passing through in perpetuity.
So, you know—we guess the deal will be somewhere between those two poles. Best of luck to all the diplomats; we want to see a good, clean game out there. Happy Wednesday.
No ICE. No War. No Kings.
by William Kristol
If it’s a Tuesday in this 250th year of American independence, Democrats are flipping state legislative seats.
Yesterday was Florida’s turn. In state Senate District 14, in the Tampa Bay area, Democrat Brian Nathan, a union leader and Navy veteran, narrowly won a special election in a district that Donald Trump had won by more than 7 points in 2024 and had voted Republican by nearly 10 points in 2022 (the winner of that year’s race, Jay Collins, vacated the seat to become Florida’s lieutenant governor). Nathan prevailed despite his GOP opponent raising several times as much money as he did.
Over on the east side of the state, in House District 87 in Palm Beach County, Democrat Emily Gregory defeated the GOP candidate by 2 points in a district the Republicans had won by 19 points in 2024, when Trump was carrying it by more than 10 points. (In this district, too, the previous Republican winner had left the seat to take another office.)
To add a well-deserved insult to the electoral injury, House District 87 includes Mar-a-Lago. It’s Trump’s home district. Indeed, state election records show that Donald, Melania, and Barron Trump all voted by mail in yesterday’s election. But it wasn’t enough to hold the seat. (If, that is, all three voted for the Republican candidate. Perhaps Melania was one of the swing voters who turned against Donald’s Republican party this year? Who knows? The secret ballot is a wonderful thing.)
In any case, Tuesday’s secret ballots in Florida were a rebuke to Donald Trump.
And at the national level, a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed Monday had Trump’s approval rating at 36 percent—down 4 points in the past week— with 62 percent of Americans disapproving. This was Trump’s worst showing in this poll since he returned to the White House.
Are things going to get better soon for Trump? It seems doubtful.
Trump’s war is unpopular. The same Reuters/Ipsos poll showed 35 percent approval and 61 percent disapproval of the strikes against Iran. The news that Trump is sending additional troops to the Middle East to prepare for possibly expanding the strikes to a ground war will probably not help those numbers.
Meanwhile, Democrats forced another vote in the Senate yesterday to require congressional approval of Trump’s war. Republicans defeated the measure. So we now have a major war, well into its fourth week, which Trump is threatening to expand to a ground war, all being done without congressional approval, and all the sole responsibility of Donald Trump and his Republican party.
Senate Republicans also blocked yesterday a Democratic move to bring to the floor legislation to fund the Transportation Security Administration. And negotiations on an agreement to fund the TSA seem to have stalled. On Monday Trump said, “I’m suggesting strongly to the Republican party, don’t make any deal on anything.” On this as on so many matters, Republicans seem to be doing Trump’s bidding.
But not to worry. If you’re waiting in line today at selected airports, you’ll get to see ICE agents milling around and not helping the situation, sent there by Trump in a pointless gesture that simply serves as a visible reminder of both Trump’s responsibility for the problem and his ineffectiveness at solving it.
And if you’re not flying today but are driving? You’ll be paying an average of $3.98 a gallon for regular gasoline, up from $2.98 a month ago, before Trump began his war.
But you’ll be glad to know that as the nation’s fortunes careen downhill, Trump is spending plenty of time on his Trump ballroom that will disfigure the White House, his triumphal arch that will loom over Arlington cemetery, and his “Garden of American Heroes” that will deface the mall.
Meanwhile, Indivisible, the organization primarily responsible for the No Kings protests—the third and likely largest of which will occur this Saturday (more on that below)—posted this on social media:
No ICE.
No wars.
No Kings.
These words fitly spoken may not quite qualify as scriptural apples of gold. But they do capture the moment and the message awfully well.
Is it possible things are getting better and worse at the same time? Tell us what you think.
The Fine Line Between Protest and Strike
by Hannah Yoest
The next nationwide No Kings protests are scheduled for this Saturday, March 28. The anti-authoritarianism demonstrations, possibly the largest in American history, have done an impressive job of bringing together old-fashioned progressive protesters (“Move On” is an active supporter) and moderates who have never protested before. Both the organization Faith in Public Life and the Freedom from Religion Foundation are listed as partners—and that kind of breadth inevitably brings disagreements. Lately, though, the issue inside No Kings isn’t ideological so much as tactical. Namely: Why is the rally on a Saturday?
Saturday is the easiest day to get people out of the house and into the streets. Whether that makes it the ideal day to hold a protest or the worst possible day to do so depends on your point of view. One side claims that just showing up and increasing visibility, peacefully, constitutes success. Defiance as an exercise of our First Amendment rights is a triumph against expanding authoritarianism. The other side sees this performance as ineffectual catharsis with no real impact other than collective coping.
Both sides are right. I emailed the No Kings organizers asking about their scheduling decisions, but I haven’t heard back.
In the wake of the October 2025 No Kings protests, David Brooks identified some of the core issues facing the movement. Yes, he wrote, they are fundamentally “pro-American,” but they lack a vision. “Donald Trump has a vision. Trump is a culture. He has a core story: The elites have betrayed you. But he doesn’t only have that story; he has a culture of MAGA,” Brooks said. He gives you identity. He gives you belonging. It takes a counterculture to best the culture that Donald Trump is leading.”
That’s certainly not what No Kings is doing. On the one hand, it’s hard to imagine a center-left version of MAGA, and even harder to imagine one that isn’t an effective emetic. On the other, it’s fair to look at the massive organizational success of No Kings and ask what the theory of victory is. How do these people all across the country translate their energy into, well, power?
One option that some within the No Kings coalition are pushing for is to hold the next rallies on a weekday. Translate the organizational power into an economic threat.
Others say the movement won’t achieve anything positive by turning out a much smaller number of people, who will skew more progressive, and who will make the movement less popular by disrupting people’s lives. The strength of the movement is currently attributable to its civility, diversity, and broad appeal.
Proponents of the Saturday strategy also point to Erica Chenoweth’s viral research on the “3.5 percent rule,” which claims “no government has withstood a challenge of 3.5% of their population mobilized against it during a peak event.” To meet that threshold would mean 12 million Americans showing up. Estimates for the June and October No Kings events ranged from 5.2 million to 7 million participants respectively. It stands to reason organizers are trying to optimize their chances of hitting that magical threshold by planning around the weekend. In other words, now is the time for building political capital, not for spending it.
But who decides when more aggressive opposition should begin?
These are relatively new questions for Americans, but they’re familiar to anti-authoritarian movements around the world. Often these disputes get resolved when the opposition has a leader. Until then, it will be a challenge for the No Kings coalition to stay focused on fighting Trumpism rather than each other.
AROUND THE BULWARK
A Blue Horizon in Wisconsin? By the end of this year, it is possible we will see Democratic dominion over the state legislature, governor’s office, and Supreme Court, argues BILL LUEDERS.
Trump’s Sick Compulsion to Insult the Dead… Perverse yet predictable, his badmouthing of Robert Mueller is the latest in a long line of cruel posthumous humiliations, writes WILL SALETAN.
Do Evangelicals Still Care to Make a Moral Case for War? When President Bush invaded Iraq, evangelical leaders argued the war was justified morally. When Trump went to war with Iran, evangelical leaders simply cheered, observes JOHN FEA.
Quick Hits
THE DAWGS OF WAR: Will the Pentagon put boots on the ground in Iran? Trump still hasn’t said—but there sure are a lot of boots headed that direction. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the Army is moving thousands soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division to support operations against Iran, even as Trump has ostensibly given Iran a five-day window in which to consider his demand that they reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Here’s the Journal:
The 82nd Airborne’s combat brigade serves as the Army’s emergency response force and can be deployed anywhere in the world in under 24 hours. They train to parachute into hostile or contested territory to secure airfields and land. The brigade would be deployed along with the division headquarters, which is responsible for planning and coordination, the officials said.
A decision to put boots on the ground in Iran hasn’t been made, officials cautioned. But the movement of the 82nd opens the door for President Trump to try to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by force, seize Iran’s strategic islands or coastline or launch a mission to capture the regime’s highly enriched uranium should he choose to do so.
Incidentally, prices for Brent crude yesterday crept back over $100 a barrel yesterday.
IS YOUR ROUTER A COMMUNIST SPY?: If you’ve been thinking of buying a new internet router recently, you might want to act fast. Yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission announced an import ban on new consumer routers, saying that the current home-internet status quo—under which pretty much all routers are manufactured overseas—represented “an unacceptable risk to the national security of the U.S. or the safety and security of Americans.” ABC News has more:
“Malicious actors have exploited security gaps in foreign-made routers to attack American households, disrupt networks, enable espionage, and facilitate intellectual property theft,” the FCC said this week, citing several examples of foreign-made routers that were involved in cyberattacks targeting U.S. infrastructure. . . .
Router models that were previously authorized by the government are still sold by retailers. Once the stock is gone, you could see shortages—and probably price hikes—as American companies restructure their supply chains, build out local manufacturing and seek U.S. approval for new models.
The FCC could well be correct that home internet equipment manufactured overseas represents a heretofore underappreciated cybersecurity risk. But the new rule will come with real costs: As things are, America simply doesn’t do consumer-router construction. Standing up an industry from nothing will take time and money, and the end result will be home tech that costs significantly more. Maybe the security gains will be worth the costs, but it’s just one more administration policy that stands to make life in America just a little more expensive.
Cheap Shots
Won't it be ironic if the crimes that finally bring down the House of Trump are insider trading around the Iran war?
Not pedophilia, not tariffs, not DOGE, not "It's Going to be Wild" RFK Jr, not a big pile of Constitutional violations, not his in your face graft, not ICE murders, not the murder of alleged drug runners in boats and so forth.
It's like mobsters of yore who never paid for their murders but went to prison for tax evasion.
Whatever it takes, the American People are abandoning Trump/MAGA in droves. Retribution is coming.
Bill: "So we now have a major war, well into its fourth week, which Trump is threatening to expand to a ground war, all being done without congressional approval, and all the sole responsibility of Donald Trump and his Republican party."
No. The sole responsibility lies with the 77 million people who voted for Trump and his Republican party. For years, there's been solid evidence that the modern GOP is incapable of governing, but because the electorate has the memory of a goldfish, they don't punish the GOP for their ineptitude. *Everything* that is happening right now -- unauthorized wars, spiraling gas prices, long lines at airports, general chaos and confusion -- is happening because 77 million abdicated their civic duty and elected these motherfuckers. The United States is getting its comeuppance, and its about time.