Donald Trump seems to be determined to break as many campaign promises as he possibly can, in the shortest period of time possible. Conveniently (for Democrats), he is doing all of this right at the start of the midterm campaign season, as the first states conduct their primaries. This seems like a rather spectacular way to commit political suicide, but then again Trump is a master at avoiding consequences, so who really knows how it will all play out?

Here we are at the end of Week Three of Trump's War, with no end in sight. Remember him campaigning on avoiding foreign wars? Well, all of that has gone right out the window. In the midst of all of this, Trump was downright astonished that learn that NATO actually can be useful to the United States (who knew?), but due to his naked belligerence towards them (complete with threats to take over Greenland and Canada, playground insults, and other assorted instances of boorishness and contempt), they are not exactly leaping into action to help Trump out. It's hard to blame them for this, but it certainly is amusing to see Trump flip-flopping from threatening NATO countries to insisting (in that petulant way only a butt-hurt 6-year-old can manage) that he really doesn't need their help at all, dammit!

Our weekly review: last Friday, the average national price of gasoline in America was $3.65 per gallon. Today, it hit $3.92. Of that total, a full 98 cents of it (at the very minimum) is due to Trump's war. The lowest price this year (back in mid-January) was $2.75, which means Trump's War is actually responsible for a rise of $1.17 (since prices began rising when the world realized that this time Trump wasn't just bluffing about attacking Iran). And prices show no signs of levelling off any time soon, so we should all expect gas to be well over four bucks a gallon by early next week (at the latest).

Remember when Trump campaigned on bringing prices down? He singled out gas prices specifically during his campaign, promising that he'd somehow magically reduce the price of gas by a whopping 50 percent during his first year in office. He didn't come anywhere close to keeping this promise -- gas would have had to have been down to $1.55 per gallon at the end of January for this to have been true. But now he is directly responsible for the price going through the roof due to his war of choice in the Middle East. Promises made, promises broken!

One rather chilling aspect to all of this is that Trump (being Trump) just keeps right on lying through his teeth, even though we are now at war. Anything about the war that he doesn't like, he either pretends didn't happen or that someone else is responsible. Dead Iranian schoolgirls? Iran must have bombed the school, not us. Israel bombed a natural gas field and Iran retaliated against Qatar? Well we didn't know anything about such plans! The media, astonishingly, refuses to press Trump on these lies -- no matter how blatant and easily-disprovable they are -- even though we are at war.

Trump, as usual, is trying to have as much fun as he can, with absolutely no regard for how sane and decent people see things. The White House keeps putting out propaganda videos (there is really no other term for them) with clips from movies and video games and football interspersed with real-life scenes of bombings, as if it is all some sort of game to delight prepubescent boys. Both the media and the Republican Party are mum, even though if a Democrat ever did anything even remotely as disgraceful and disgusting, they'd be losing their collective minds.

As for Trump's attitude towards the economic pain his war (which he bafflingly keeps calling "an excursion") is causing Americans here at home, it is pretty dismissive. No "I feel your pain" moments will be forthcoming, obviously, since admitting that such pain exists means admitting Trump caused it. So Trump's answer to high gas prices is: "They'll come down real soon after the war's over, trust me!" and that's it. Both Trump and his advisors aren't even shy about brushing off high prices at the pump, either. The amount of disdain they are showing is just jaw-dropping. Here's Kevin Hassett, Trump's top economic advisor, being interviewed on CNBC this week:

The fact is that the U.S. economy is fundamentally sound and that if [the war] were to be extended, it wouldn't really disrupt the U.S. economy very much at all. It would hurt consumers. And we'd have to think about, if that continued, what we would have to do about that. But that's like, really the last of our concerns right now.

Got that? As you stand in front of the gas pump watching the numbers fly upwards, you can rest assured that all of it is "the last of concerns" for Donald Trump. As we said, this is not exactly: "I feel your pain." It is more like: "Pain? You're feeling pain? Well, that's just too freakin' bad for you, because we simply don't care at all."

It almost seems like Trump is trying to commit political suicide.

Now Trump and his minions are left floundering around, grasping at straws, in a belated effort to do something to stop the price of oil from skyrocketing. Most of what they have tried hasn't had any effect at all. So they've now latched onto the rather novel idea: "Hey, maybe if we helped fund our enemies, that might help?" Sanctions on Russian oil were unceremoniously dropped, and now they're considering dropping sanctions on Iran as well -- even though we are now at war with them. This is beyond incompetence, this is downright insanity, but that doesn't seem to faze them at all. Here's how one expert described this new concept:

"Two countries that we've spent years sanctioning are now the direct beneficiaries of a conflict the United States chose to start," said Brett Erickson, managing principal at Obsidian Risk Advisors, which specializes in financial crime and regulatory issues. "The United States has spent years building sanctions architecture specifically designed to constrict Russia and Iran. Within three weeks of this conflict starting, we're tearing it to shreds.

"That is not a short-term adjustment, it's a complete strategic collapse."

Trump and his macho cheerleader Pete Hegseth quite obviously are in way over their depth. With no "adults in the room" to tell Trump "No," he has been blundering into making mistakes that any rational analyst could have easily predicted before the fact. A few reportedly even did -- Trump was warned by a top military general about the danger of Iran shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, but Trump decided (on gut feeling alone) that they wouldn't do so -- they'd just roll over and allow us to bomb them without launching any retaliation at all. Also, there used to be a whole bunch of experts -- at the State Department and elsewhere in the executive branch -- who had the job of "gaming out possible scenarios if the Strait of Hormuz was closed." So why didn't they warn Trump beforehand? Well, because Elon Musk fired them all. NOTUS revealed this in a shocking (but not too surprising) report that really should have gotten more media attention this week:

Six months before the Trump administration started bombing Iran, the Department of State fired its oil and gas experts.

As the war in Iran stretches into its third week, and the Strait of Hormuz -- through which 20% of the world's oil supply usually flows -- remains effectively closed, the U.S. government is without the resources it once had to handle such crises, former State Department employees tell NOTUS.

. . .

The usual process of analyzing, reporting and debating before decisions are made all but ceased, said three people who quit their positions at the National Security Council[,] the Treasury[,] and the DOE in the last six months. Before the Trump administration, those three agencies, alongside the State Department, would have engaged in a robust interagency debate about how to handle a global oil crisis like the one currently unfolding in the Middle East.

"You dismantled the framework that any other administration would have used to engage on these very issues," one former State Department energy official said. "In a normally functioning administration, I don't know that we would have gotten here, because there would have been a process that would have examined the derivative, second-order and third-order effects. You probably would have had a lot more forethought that would have gone into this situation."

Even Trump's loyalists in the intelligence services were forced to admit that Trump's justifications for launching his war were beyond farfetched, while testifying before Congress this week. Nope, Iran wasn't on the brink of making a nuclear bomb, and nope, they also weren't on the brink of building an intercontinental ballistic missile that could have reached the United States. The most Tulsi Gabbard would say was that Iran might "begin to develop" an I.C.B.M. "before 2035." That doesn't exactly sound "imminent," does it?

Another footnote in this clown parade of incompetence: Trump pulled out all the minesweepers America had positioned in the region and shipped them all back to Philadelphia in January, right before Trump decided to launch his war of choice. And now he's whining about European countries not sending their own minesweeping ships? No wonder they are all laughing at his requests -- after we sent home our entire minesweeping fleet just before the war started!

This was all too much for one member of Team Trump, who resigned this week in disgust. Joe Kent was, up until this week, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, and was a dyed-in-the-wool MAGA conspiracy theorist. He's no paragon of virtue (or sanity), in other words. But he reached his breaking point and publicly posted his resignation letter online, which was absolutely scathing in its denunciation of Trump's War:

"After much reflection, I have decided to resign," Joe Kent, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, posted on X in a letter to President Donald Trump. "I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran.''

Kent continued: "Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.''

. . .

He accused, without mentioning names, "high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media" of deploying a "misinformation campaign that wholly undermined [Trump's] America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran."

Meanwhile, Trump's head of the Federal Communications Commission has decided to go full-on Orwellian, threatening broadcast television networks with the loss of broadcast licenses if they don't start to provide sunny, cheerleading news reporting on Trump's war. So much for the First Amendment's guarantee of the freedom of the press, eh?

We're only three weeks into Trump's War. But there still is no end in sight, and the gas prices just keep going up. Trump doesn't care about public opinion and he doesn't care that millions of his own voters are now feeling the pain from his war of choice. We can only hope that they remember all of this come November, personally.

 

Illinois held their primary election this week, and the results were sort of a mixed bag. Some progressives won, some lost. Some establishment candidates won, some lost. Some pro-Israel candidate won, some lost. It wasn't really an across-the-board victory for any particular faction, truth be told. But there was one race that was more interesting than some of the others, because of who did lose there -- not a candidate, but a special interest group.

Here's the basic story:

Last November, Daniel Biss, a Democratic candidate for Congress in Illinois, was bracing for the nation's most powerful pro-Israel lobbying group to insert itself into his race. A grandson of Holocaust survivors who later settled in Israel, he describes himself as both a supporter of the Jewish state and a "fierce critic" of its current government.

So Mr. Biss and his team wanted to know just how popular -- or unpopular -- the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was in a district with a long tradition of Jewish representation.

The results were stark.

Three times more Democratic voters there viewed AIPAC unfavorably than favorably, 51 percent to 17 percent, according to an internal campaign survey shared with The New York Times. It was what Mr. Biss needed to make a key decision that helped him clinch a primary win on Tuesday in Illinois's Ninth Congressional District: He would make AIPAC -- and the millions of dollars it wound up pouring into the race through secretive super PACs -- a central character, if not a villain, in the campaign.

Long story short: it worked. Biss won. Afterwards, he summed his victory up, saying: "The candidate [AIPAC] spent the most money attacking is me, and I won. The district they spent the most money in is this, and they lost. And they lost because the voters knew who was spending the money and why. I think there's a really important message in that, that the whole country should hear."

Now, allow us to be clear. We are not against special interest groups trying to influence elections by spending money. We are not even anti-AIPAC, per se. But what we find pernicious is the tactics they have been using in multiple Democratic primary races.

AIPAC doesn't directly run ads on their main issue, which is supporting both Israel and the Netanyahu government without any reservations or qualifications. Israel isn't even mentioned in most of their ads (if not all of them). In fact, AIPAC doesn't even admit that it is spending money on the race. They use a loophole in campaign finance law to do so, by creating new super PACs out of thin air so late in the election cycle that by the time the proper paperwork has been filed to show who is footing the bill, the election's already over. That is intentionally deceitful.

In the Illinois race, they created the groups "Elect Chicago Women" and the "Chicago Progressive Partnership" to attack the candidates they didn't want to win (both Biss and Kat Abughazaleh, who is much more critical of Israel than Biss).

Then, when the polls close and the votes are counted, AIPAC comes out and admits that it was indeed them who paid for all those ads.

We find we have to agree with Biss, who said of AIPAC: "They're putting in all this money because they want to buy the seat for someone who's going to offer a blank check of military aid for Israel. And they're hiding it because they know that you won't like that if you hear it."

Here is how we feel (in general) about such tactics: if you want to advocate for a cause in a primary (or general) election, then go right ahead and do so. But do so openly -- without using campaign finance loopholes to hide your identity, and without completely avoiding the issue you are advocating for or against. Doing otherwise is not honest. Which is why we were glad to see Biss win. It is also why -- for so effectively pointing out the sneakiness involved -- we are awarding him this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award.

[Daniel Biss is still currently a candidate for office, and it is our blanket policy not to link to campaign websites, so you'll have to search his contact information out yourselves if you want to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]

 

He was much more of a Labor leader than a Democrat, but he did campaign for Robert Kennedy when he ran for president, so we decided that was close enough for the purposes of this award.

César Chávez was, up until this week, a revered figure in California and much of the rest of the country. California made his birthday a state holiday, which was also recognized by the federal government. He won a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work organizing farmworkers into Unions. Countless things were named after him in the state and elsewhere.

All of that came crashing down this week, with an exposé in the New York Times that revealed accusations that Chávez groomed and then sexually molested at least two underage girls back in the 1970s:

Ana Murguia and Debra Rojas, both 66 now, were the daughters of longtime United Farm Workers organizers and had known Mr. [César] Chavez since they were children. Both women lived at La Paz, Calif., the union's sprawling compound in the Tehachapi Mountains, more than 100 miles north of Los Angeles.

Ms. Murguia met Mr. Chavez when she was 8. (He was in his 40s.) It was in the privacy of Mr. Chavez's office that he began to molest her, starting when she was 13. He told her to keep it a secret, saying others would get jealous. She said the sexual abuse lasted until she was 17.

Ms. Rojas said she was 12 when Mr. Chavez first touched her and fondled her breasts, in the same office where he'd meet with Ms. Murguia. When Ms. Rojas was 15, he arranged to have her stay at a motel during a weekslong march through California. There, he had intercourse with her -- rape, under California law. He told her that he had known they belonged together since he saw her at the age of 9.

After the news broke, Dolores Huerta -- who worked closely with Chávez and was considered his equal in the farmworker Labor movement -- revealed that not only had Chávez raped her too, but that she had had two children as a result:

[I]n her interview, Ms [Dolores] Huerta, now 95, described being raped by Mr. Chavez, a secret she had held on to for nearly 60 years.

One night during the winter of 1966, she said, Mr. Chavez drove her out to a secluded grape field in Delano, Calif., parked and forced her to have sex inside the vehicle. She said she chose not to report the assault to the police because of their hostility toward the movement, and she feared that no one within the union would believe her.

She also described an earlier encounter in August 1960, when she said she felt pressured to have sex with Mr. Chavez in a hotel room during a work trip in San Juan Capistrano in Southern California.

. . .

Ms. Huerta said she had two children with Mr. Chavez from the two encounters she described. She said she concealed both pregnancies even from Mr. Chavez. She placed both infants with families she believed could provide more stable lives.

All of these revelations have created a frenzy both in California and elsewhere to remove his name from all sorts of things (streets, parks, monuments, etc.) and to hastily repackage the holiday set aside to honor Chávez. Which is all a very appropriate response, to such horrific allegations.

The word "disappointed" falls far short of the way we feel about Chávez now, but it's all we've got, so we are hereby posthumously awarding this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week to César Chávez.

[Since he is deceased, no contact information is possible for César Chávez.]

 

Volume 833 (3/20/26)

Another mixed batch this week. And we didn't know where else to put it, but if you need a laugh (and who doesn't, these days?) you should go check out all the Trump effigies that were created -- and later burnt -- for a festival in Spain this week. Maybe some town in America needs to start up such a festival here? Just an idea....

 

   Who voted for this war?

Promises made, promises broken.

"I'd like to know -- who voted for this war? I'd really like to ask all the Trump voters one question: Did you vote for this? Did you? Didn't Trump promise to avoid unnecessary foreign wars -- especially in the Middle East? Don't you remember him campaigning on that? So why is he now doing exactly what he promised he wouldn't do? I don't know about you, but I didn't hear one Trump voter last year proudly stating that they had voted for Trump 'because I want to see him start a war with Iran.' So who, exactly, voted for this war?"

 

   Maybe don't fire all the experts?

Seems obvious, doesn't it?

"Donald Trump lives in fear of people who are smarter than he is -- which is a whole lot of people, by the way. He trusts his gut rather than pointy-headed experts, in all things. But maybe gut feelings aren't the best thing to rely on when fighting a war? Maybe you should listen to people who have actual military experience, when they warn you what the enemy is almost certain to do? Or I dunno, maybe don't fire all the experts who know about how the oil business works in the Middle East? Because from what we've seen so far, 'Trump's gut feeling' leaves a whole lot to be desired in a war plan."

 

   Who voted for $4 a gallon?

Another good question to ask.

"Who voted to see gas prices climb above four bucks a gallon? Anyone? Because for the life of me I don't think anybody voted for that, unless you maybe count oil company executives or something. Trump promised he'd slash the price of gas by half in his first year in office. Instead, he started a war that has hiked the price through the roof. When asked when these prices can be expected to come down, he has no answer. He wants everyone to pay outrageous prices at the pump and just not notice them at all or something. It's just another one of Trump's campaign promises that he lied about, folks. I mean, really -- who voted for this?!?"

 

   Your concern is underwhelming

This quote should be carried on a little piece of paper by every Democrat being interviewed any time in the near future, because of the striking callousness of it.

"You know, when Trump's top economic advisor was asked about the skyrocketing price of gas, he actually said the quiet part out loud. After first telling everyone that sky-high gas prices -- even if the war went on for a long time -- quote: 'wouldn't really disrupt the U.S. economy very much at all,' he then did admit that: 'It would hurt consumers,' before revealing how little that meant to either him or his boss Donald Trump, saying: 'that's like, really the last of our concerns right now.' So there you have it folks -- the pain at the pump is the last of Trump's concerns right now. He's telling you plain and simple that he just doesn't care about you at all. He doesn't feel your pain -- he caused your pain. And he just doesn't care."

 

   Tell it like it is, Rep. Ryan

It's always amusing to see the comeuppance of a bully. And with Europe, Trump's chickens came home to roost in a big way this week. It was pathetic watching him first beg for NATO's help and then throw a tantrum when they refused to give it (for many good reasons other than Trump's insults, to boot). But the best commentary on the whole situation came from Representative Pat Ryan, a Democrat from New York. When asked about Europe's reluctance to bail Trump out, he responded incredulously:

The president spent years shitting all over our allies, and then doesn't consult them before this war, doesn't consult the American people before this war, and now he expects them to come to our assistance?

 

   If I ran China...

It's kind of surprising that so few people have brought this up yet. It seems kind of obvious....

"You know what? If I ran China, I'd be thinking to myself: What better time could there ever be to invade Taiwan? Seriously -- the U.S. Navy has been sent from Asian waters to the Middle East, and they're reportedly already running low on all those high-tech interceptor missiles that can take down incoming enemy missiles. They can't quickly build any more of them, since China controls the rare earth minerals necessary (and the production lines couldn't handle it anyway). Donald Trump is mired in a war that he's not exactly winning, and Europe just laughs at him when he asks for their help. So what better time could there ever be to achieve one of China's longstanding objectives -- taking over Taiwan and kicking the U.S. out for good? It's a scary thought, you've got to admit."

 

   Hail Trump!

Numismatists are horrified, and rightly so.

"First, it was the fact that the new dime minted for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence shows a U.S. eagle clutching a bundle of arrows -- but without an olive branch in his other talon. That was bad enough. And Trump's trying to get his own face on the dollar coin they mint to mark the occasion as well. But even that's not enough for Trump's planetary-sized ego. Because now Donald Trump wants the U.S. government to mint a solid-gold coin with his ugly face on it. Does he want to be emperor now, or what? Because it's usually monarchs that put gold coins out with their faces on them while they are still alive. This really doesn't matter to Trump, of course... he'd love it if everyone stood up and yelled out: 'Hail Trump!' every time he walked into a room."

-- Chris Weigant

 

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Cross-posted at: Democratic Underground