Maybe we need a new word for the way Donald Trump seems to be running the country: "chaocracy." Rule by chaos. The "Madman Theory" writ large. Nobody has any clue what's going to happen next, from Trump himself all the way down to average Americans and the rest of the world.

Of course, this has always been Donald Trump's modus operandi to some extent, but it is much more apparent now that we're in what seems to be a prolonged war. Trump is now attempting a feint in this war, but nobody's really sure what is the feint and what will become reality in the next few weeks. Trump himself probably doesn't know, at this point.

On the one hand, Trump seems increasingly desperate to strike some kind of deal with Iran that would end the conflict and open the Strait of Hormuz. But on the other hand, he's moving thousands of U.S. soldiers to the region -- and in the past, whenever he's created a big buildup of military resources, he has wound up using them. So which is it going to be? An offramp that provides a path to eventual peace (or at least "stability"), or a ground invasion of Iran by U.S. Marines and paratroopers? Nobody knows, because the chaocrat-in-chief could go either way depending on which side of the bed he got out of that morning.

His spokespeople are tying themselves in knots trying to make the case to the American public that all is well, of course Trump knows what he is doing, and everything is going to be fine. Often this leads to language that can only be properly described as "Orwellian." Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was interviewed on a Sunday-morning show and he was asked about Trump's conflicting messages on the war (whether it was almost over or about to ramp up in a big way). Here was his response: "Sometimes you have to escalate to de-escalate." Um, sure... yeah, that clears everything up!

In other Orwellian news, rather than presenting Donald Trump with a daily detailed intelligence briefing on the war, his aides have reportedly just been putting together a two-minute video full of clips showing things in Iran being blown up. Trump's not a "get into the details" kind of guy, but even so, the image of him watching such a thing every day is rather galling. You can picture his reactions: "Boom! Whoosh! Blam! This is so cool...." Perhaps the White House should start releasing these video montages to the public? There's even a great name for them, taken straight from Nineteen Eighty-Four: the "Two Minutes' Hate."

The way things are going, you have to wonder whether Team Trump is about to change the name of the Pentagon again, this time to the "Department of War Is Peace," perhaps? Wouldn't be too surprising, at this point.

Here's how one columnist summed up all this chaos:

Neither [Donald] Trump nor his aides, according to recent reporting, planned for Iran to target shipping and close the Strait of Hormuz. They also do not seem to have planned for serious and sustained retaliation against America's gulf state allies. They did not plan for an energy crisis and the potential disruption to the global economy, and they did not plan for America's European allies to, by and large, reject their call for support.

To read about the administration's decision-making process is to learn that it did not really plan for or expect much in the way of anything that now defines the war. This raises two obvious questions: What did they plan for? And what exactly did they expect to happen?

It appears that both the president and the White House expected token resistance, followed by the collapse of the Iranian regime, the installation of a pro-American government -- or at least one we could tolerate -- and a return to the status quo ante: a replay, in essence, of the president's first intervention of the year, in Venezuela. Now that this replay fantasy has collided with a more complex, indeterminate and difficult reality, Trump is unable to explain his objectives or even give the country a sense of when the war might end. He told Fox News radio that he would "feel it in my bones." Let's just say that that is a far cry from traditional political leadership during wartime.

Here is another very similar take on the situation:

It is by now clear that Trump is being graded on a curve. When he says he will raise tariffs to 130 percent or that he will blow up Iran's biggest gas field or that "the war is very complete, pretty much" none of these statements mean much. They could be actual American policies or not, or they could stand as policy for a day or a week after which they will change. After saying that the war was pretty much complete, that same day Trump asserted that "we haven't won enough" and that "we'll not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated." He's said that he agreed to negotiate with Iran's leaders but then couldn't because they keep getting killed -- though it is of course his own military (and Israel's) which is doing the killing. All clear?

Trump's supporters claim this incoherence is strategic genius, that he is keeping people off guard. Except that policy seems to change for a variety of reasons: Maybe the stock market falls, or maybe the target country lavishes praise on Trump and gives him a gold bar. Trump's superpower is that he is flexible enough to turn on a dime and has a base that will accept anything he proposes. Once unalterably opposed to Middle Eastern wars, many of his MAGA followers now believe in this Middle Eastern war with the zeal of converts. And while Trump has made clear that he would like to end the hostilities, the problem this time, unlike with tariffs, is that he cannot stop what he started. Iran gets a vote. And it is currently voting to keep fighting, calculating that though weakened, it has enough military power to do damage to the world economy, thereby inflicting pain on the U.S.

For the world there is no longer any such thing as American credibility, just a strange reality television show in which the main actor swerves, bobs and weaves his way through crises, hoping that what he says today will solve the crisis caused by what he said yesterday. The day before he threatened to obliterate Iran's power plants, Trump had claimed that the US was considering "winding down" its military operations against Iran and implied that protecting the Strait of Hormuz was not his problem and could be dealt with by other nations whose imports passed through the strait. At another point, he said he didn't need any other country's help. Businessmen used to rail against previous administrations because of policy uncertainty. Now they line up to praise Trump as his carnival of chaos roils markets almost every week.

Chaocracy. Plain and simple.

The pressures on Trump are increasing from all sides, it now seems. This could be one reason for the manic rollercoaster week we've just had, as competing forces yank Trump in different directions. Last weekend, Trump issued an ultimatum to Iran: open the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, or Trump would bomb all their power plants. But before the deadline was reached, Trump flip-flopped by announcing that he was holding "very strong" talks with the Iranians, and that they were going so well that he would postpone his deadline another five days. Later in the week, he extended this for another 10 days.

Iran's reaction was astonishment: "Talks? What talks? We're not talking to Donald Trump at all... there are no negotiations taking place." This sounded pretty believable, considering the fact that Trump has not hesitated to just flat-out lie about multiple aspects of this war. Trump insisted that talks were taking place, and that Iran was pretty close to agreeing to terms.

The reality emerged after a few days of this chaos, and seemed to be that the U.S. and Iran had been passing notes back and forth by using Pakistan as an intermediary. America proposed a 15-point plan to end the war, which Iran rejected out of hand. Iran's basic position hasn't changed from the position they've held for decades, which isn't really too surprising. No actual talks or direct negotiations are taking place at all.

For Trump and America, this is a war of attrition, in multiple ways. First there is the military sense of the term. Perhaps Trump's newfound eagerness to end the war stems from the reporting that Israel is reportedly running out of interceptors? They used up a great number of them last year, when Israel and the U.S. bombed Iran's nuclear facilities, and they've been using them up at a frantic pace since the current war began four weeks ago. So far there haven't been any direct reports that America is also running low on interceptors, but apparently we are informing our NATO allies that we won't be able to resupply all those missiles that have been going to Ukraine, which is a worrisome development (especially for the Ukrainians, obviously). Today it was reported that we've fired off over 850 Tomahawk missiles in only four weeks' time, which has drawn down our own military stockpile.

There's an imbalance here, because precision high-tech missiles -- whether offensive ones such as Tomahawks or defensive interceptor missiles -- are very expensive and take a long time to make. But drones and basic ballistic missiles are a lot easier and cheaper to build. So if Iran has enough of them to launch, they can effectively cause us to use up an enormous amount of very expensive weapons without having to spend much themselves. And those very expensive high-tech weapons can't be replaced in the numbers that are being used in this war. Meaning this part of the war of attrition might be influencing Trump's new push to strike a deal with Iran.

You can use that phrase in other contexts, as well. The longer oil and gasoline prices remain sky-high, the more political support Trump loses, both at home and abroad. He's already taken the extraordinary step of waiving sanctions on oil from Russia and Iran -- two countries that we are either in a direct war with or a proxy war -- which brought a windfall pile of money to both countries. This, not to put too fine a point on it, is not normal, because it is actually helping our enemies out during a war.

Gas prices are currently scraping four dollars a gallon here at home (that's a nationwide average -- it has gone over that milestone in many states already), which is already not only causing economic pain to American drivers but is also having ripple effects across all other sectors of the economy as well. Mortgage rates are way up. Prices are either going up or about to go up on all kinds of things, due to diesel fuel prices spiking even higher than gasoline prices. This is going to lead to a big increase in inflation across the board. All of this could get a lot worse, if Trump does decide to send in the ground troops (which would almost certainly lead to an even bigger spike in the worldwide price of oil).

We're even at the point where Republicans in Congress are getting nervous about the chaotic way Trump has been waging this war. The Pentagon has given Congress closed-door classified briefings -- but without actually answering any important questions or laying out a coherent war plan (much less an exit strategy). Democrats have been pointing this out since the war began, but now it's causing some worry among Republicans as well:

It is not just Democrats in Congress who fear that Donald Trump's war in Iran is going sideways. After a classified Pentagon briefing on Wednesday, Republican lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee appeared shaken.

"We will not sacrifice American lives for the same failed foreign policies," said Nancy Mace, warning about the possibility of American troops in Iran. The committee chair, Mike Rogers, complained that members aren't getting nearly enough information about war plans. Troop movements, he said, should be "thoughtful and deliberate." The implication was that they might not be.

Here's some more of what Rogers had to say:

A top Republican denounced the Pentagon Wednesday for failing to give lawmakers enough information about U.S. military operations during a classified briefing on Iran -- including plans for troops.

House Armed Services Committee chair Rep. Mike Rogers said members warned defense officials that troop movements in the region should be "thoughtful and deliberate." They also made it clear the administration isn't offering details on American efforts in the U.S. campaign, dubbed Operation Epic Fury.

"We want to know more about what's going on, what the options are, and why they're being considered," the Alabama lawmaker said. "And we're just not getting enough answers on those questions."

It's a notable rebuke from a senior GOP defense hawk who has backed President Donald Trump's decision to attack Iran -- and a warning that the administration could lose support for the nearly month-old war if it can't adequately make the case to Congress.

All of this chaos is having a big effect on Trump's domestic support as well. His polling has taken a nose dive since the war began, and he is now roughly 16 points underwater. His approval ratings hover around 40 percent (lower, in some polls), while his disapproval ratings are rising to the high 50s (and even 60 percent or more, in some polls).

And he keeps right on shooting himself in the foot. When asked about the rising price of gasoline and the stock market taking a big dive as a result of his war, this week Trump responded: "It didn't matter to me." Which is about as far away from "I feel your pain" as you can get, obviously. Prices going up? Trump does not care. The message is simple, and it is likely exacerbating his falling poll numbers.

There was one other big bit of political news this week, as a last-minute deal to fund the Transportation Security Administration seems to have fallen apart. All week long, Senate Democrats and Republicans have been going back and forth over a bill which would fund almost everything at the Department of Homeland Security (including the T.S.A.), and after all their wrangling Republicans agreed to a plan that Democrats had proposed many weeks ago. It would fund everything at D.H.S. except for ICE and the Border Patrol, but it would leave out the basic Democratic demands over changes to those two agencies (which spurred the partial government shutdown in the first place). Earlier in the week, Republicans had floated a plan which would have funded some of ICE with some of the Democratic demands met, but the Democrats balked at this. In any case, since Congress is about to go on a two-week vacation, late last night the deal was struck. A vote was held at 2:30 in the morning, and the bill passed. All the senators then patted themselves on the back and today flew back home to start their vacation.

Today, however, the House rejected the Senate plan. Maybe they were just annoyed that the Senate used the same tactic that Speaker Mike Johnson has been fond of using (passing something right before everyone scarpers off on vacation, and essentially telling the other house: "Take it or leave it"). In any case, they proposed their own funding bill which would kick the can down the road for two months, but this bill is dead on arrival in the Senate (or it would be, if they were still in town). The pressure is on Johnson now, because the Senate bill would likely pass if it was brought onto the floor (because many House Democrats would support it). So he's got to decide whether to hold the House back from their vacation plans to do so, or whether he's going to let the whole thing go nowhere for two weeks.

In the midst of all this legislative chaos, Donald Trump signed an executive order that will allow the D.H.S. to see that all the T.S.A. agents start to get paid again. So many of them have called in sick or just quit altogether that it led to huge lines at some airports (not all -- it was never as widespread as the news made it sound, but it was bad enough in some big hub airports). The media's spotlighting of all of this is what lit a fire under everybody to act, it bears mentioning. Trump's first chaotic move, earlier this week, came after he was made aware of a phone call from "Linda from Arizona" to some MAGA show, where she suggested moving ICE agents to the airports to do all the T.S.A. workers' jobs. Trump eagerly (and chaotically) championed this move (while claiming it was his idea and his alone -- sorry, Linda from Arizona...) and by Monday ICE agents were walking around various airports, in full battle gear (for some reason). Trump also mused about maybe sending National Guard troops to help as well, but thankfully he never issued that order.

This didn't exactly help all that much, since as some media reports showed, all they really were doing was walking around the airports, without actually helping out the T.S.A. at all. This was likely due to the seat-of-the-pants way the whole policy was implemented. And, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pointed out, the ICE agents were not wearing their masks -- proving that yes, they can indeed appear unmasked in public without the sky falling.

But due to Trump's new executive order, starting next week T.S.A. agents will get paid even if Congress doesn't reach a funding deal. This could lower the pressure on Congress to actually get something done, but we'll have to wait and see. Hopefully it will bring relief to all the T.S.A. agents' families, at the very least (who haven't seen a paycheck in over a month).

This all happened in just one week, mind you. And these are just the two biggest political stories out there. There's plenty of other things going on in the world of politics, many of them equally as chaotic as the big two, but this article is long enough already, so we're just going to ignore them for now.

 

This is an easy one, this week. Our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week is Emily Gregory, who just won an upset victory in a special election race for a district in the Florida legislature. But it's not just any district she won:

Democrat Emily Gregory won the special election to represent a Florida state House district that includes President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home on Tuesday, according to Associated Press projections, a stunning upset that signals Democratic momentum ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Gregory, a first-time candidate and fitness business owner, defeated Jon Maples, a Republican endorsed by Trump and aligned with his policies. Mike Caruso, the Republican who vacated the seat to become Palm Beach County clerk and comptroller, won the district by 19 percentage points in 2024.

"Tonight's result sends a clear message that people want Florida to move in a new direction, one where leaders focus on lowering costs and standing up for working families," Gregory said in a statement to The Washington Post.

. . .

Gregory's campaign focused more on local issues, such as education and the cost of living in Florida, than on the national political climate, despite running to represent the president's home district. She said Tuesday night that her win showed that Florida residents are "being squeezed by rising housing costs, insurance rates and everyday expenses, and that's what this campaign has always been about: making Florida more affordable and making sure our state works for the people who live here."

Democrats were (understandably) gleeful at this upset win. Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee said: "Donald Trump's own neighbors just sent a crystal-clear message: They are furious and ready for change." Heather Williams, the president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee was even more pointed in her reaction: "Mar-a-Lago just flipped red to blue, which should have Republicans sweating the midterms. If Mar-a-Lago is vulnerable, imagine what's possible this November."

Both Gregory and another Democrat who flipped a different seat in the same election put together a winning margin by not only turning out Democrats to vote, but by getting lots of independent and even Republican voters to support them as well. And it all boils down to a focus on the economy, as it has in so many other races Democrats have been winning:

Gregory's win is dripping with symbolism: Trump's neighbors rejected his brand of politics in a special election, and the president will be represented by a Democrat in the Florida House.

But this district and Florida in general represent the kind of places where Democrats have lost ground in the past decade. And Democrats acknowledge it is in such places that they will have to improve their standing with voters to have a shot at surprise wins in November.

"In Florida and nationwide, you don't have to be a Democrat to vote for a Democrat. That is what we are seeing," said David Jolly, the former Republican congressman who is running for governor in Florida as a Democrat. "Last night is consistent with a massive trend towards change here. Voters are telling us what they want. Voters are telling us that they need more attention paid to the economy, to health care."

Gregory's win continues a remarkable streak for Democrats. Since Donald Trump got elected, they have flipped 30 races nationwide (at various levels of government). To date, the Republicans have flipped zero such districts. This bodes well for November, folks.

For continuing this streak -- but mostly just for who lives in her district -- Emily Gregory is easily the winner of this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week.

[Since this was a special election, she has already been sworn in and you can congratulate Florida Representative Emily Gregory on her new Florida House contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]

 

Sadly, this one is also easy this week. A House Democrat is now in danger of being expelled from the chamber, as the House Ethics Committee has now made its judgment. Here's the basic story:

Beleaguered Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Florida) violated House ethics rules, a House Ethics Committee panel said Friday, citing the findings of a years-long investigation into whether she used covid pandemic money to bolster a run for Congress.

The vote follows a rare public hearing Thursday, in which members of the House Ethics Committee queried Cherfilus-McCormick's lawyer about allegations related to her family's South Florida health care business. The committee's investigation outlined 27 potential ethics violations in a lengthy document related to the episode, and Cherfilus-McCormick separately faces criminal charges and up to 53 years in prison tied to an overpayment of Federal Emergency Management Agency dollars.

. . .

The criminal investigation found that the lawmaker's health care company was overpaid $5 million in 2021, the apparent result of a clerical error. Instead of returning that money, Cherfilus-McCormick distributed some of it to friends and family, who in turn later donated to her campaign committee, according to the Justice Department. Such so-called straw donations would be illegal under campaign finance laws.

The Committee hasn't made a determination on what it is going to recommend the rest of the House do yet. They have a range of options:

The full Ethics Committee is expected to meet in April, after a House recess, and recommend whether Cherfilus-McCormick should be expelled, censured or face some other form of discipline. A fellow Florida lawmaker, Republican Greg Steube, has pledged to bring any proposed consequence swiftly to the full House for a vote.

We've already seen the House expel a member recently (George Santos), even though this is incredibly rare (Santos was only the sixth member to ever get chucked out). But even if the committee does recommend expulsion, this would require a two-thirds vote to accomplish. That means a whole bunch of Democrats would have to vote to expel Cherfilus-McCormick. And it would also give Republicans more breathing room on their razor-thin margin, until a special election could be held to replace her.

So far, Cherfilus-McCormick is insisting on her innocence and is not going to resign her seat. But the news of the Ethics Committee's decision today easily made her the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week. Democrats will now have to decide whether they take their professed anti-corruption stance seriously, or whether they will allow Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick to continue to serve (for purely partisan reasons).

[Contact Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick on her House contact page, to let her know what you think of her actions.]

 

Volume 834 (3/27/26)

It was a week jam-packed with possible talking points -- so many, in fact, that we had a tough time choosing. So we thought we'd provide a list of those that didn't make the cut, as a sort of "build your own talking point" exercise for the reader.

Let's see, we already mentioned the "Two Minutes' Hate" videos (and all the other Orwellian nonsense coming from the administration, like that "Sometimes you have to escalate to de-escalate" comment, for instance).

Then there was a bit of hilarity from the podium of the White House briefing room, when the press secretary was asked what people can believe about the war when they are getting such mixed and contradictory messages. She responded with one of the funniest whoppers any Trump spokesperson has ever come up with: "Look, if you've heard it from the president of the United States, obviously it's true." Maybe she's trying her hand at stand-up comedy? It's hard to tell....

What else... Trump voted in that Florida special election the way he always does: by mail. Seems it's good enough for him, he just wants to prevent any Democrats from using the same system.

The Department of Justice admitted in court that it actually has no evidence that the Fed chair has committed a crime, they're just on a partisan witch hunt and want the judge to let them keep fishing.

And finally, someone had some fun hacking Google's database, which caused reporters calling in to the White House switchboard to see on their phones' screens that they were calling "Epstein Island." Nice one!

As we mentioned, any or all of those could have made good talking points, but here is the list we finally settled on:

 

   Chaocracy

We will admit we're not great at launching internet memes, but that never stopped us from trying!

"This is government-by-chaos, folks. Donald Trump has no idea what he's doing, he changes his mind on a whim, and even his closest advisors have no clue whether he's about to escalate his war in Iran with American boots on the ground or whether he's really desperate to end the whole thing. It's pure chaos. We'd do better to turn the whole war over to a Magic 8 Ball than what we've got now. Even that would be better than the chaocracy we've got now."

 

   No end in sight

The longer this goes on, the worse it is for Trump. So don't be shy -- point it out!

"Gas prices are through the roof, with no end in sight. Prices for diesel are even worse. Prices for fertilizer are skyrocketing too -- right as farmers need to do their spring planting. This is all going to mean higher prices for everything in the coming months. Donald Trump's War is being paid for by the American consumer, and he does not care -- he has explicitly said so, several times. We're already paying a premium at the gas pumps, and we'll soon be paying a premium to fly on an airplane, to buy food, or to buy anything that moves anywhere by truck -- which is almost everything. And there is no end in sight. Trump has no exit plan, period. And we're the ones paying the price for that."

 

   A check on Trump

The affordability argument is indeed going to be a strong one, all through the midterm campaign season, but there's another argument to make to voters as well.

"Donald Trump needs a check on his chaotic impulses. The Republican-led Congress is quite obviously not up to this task. The only way Trump is going to get any sort of check on any of his bad and dangerous ideas is if Democrats win Congress back this November. So when you go to vote, think to yourself: do I want another two years of unchecked chaos, or do I want someone to put the brakes on the worst of it? And then vote for the Democrat, because that's the only way this is going to change."

 

   Participation trophy

More Orwellian stuff, as the Dear Leader just can't get enough of it.

"Did you see that the Republicans in Congress created yet another fake award to give to Donald Trump? Mike Johnson announced Trump had won the first-ever 'America First Award,' which was a little statue of a golden eagle. And Jen Psaki on MS NOW nailed it, saying in response: 'Little Mike Johnson and all those Republicans have just created yet another participation trophy to give to their very special boy in the White House to make sure he feels good about himself.' She's right -- remember when conservatives mocked fake awards like this for children? Now it seems they've decided their toddler-in-chief needs as many of them as they can dream up. How pathetic is that?"

 

   Paying the enemy

Even some Republicans are having problems with this one (as they should):

"Donald Trump has come up with a novel way to fight a war. He's decided that we should just hand the enemy we are fighting a whole ton of money. Yeah, you read that correctly -- Trump's big idea was to just start paying the enemy. He waived oil sanctions on Iranian oil, which meant that they could sell it freely on the world market and make a lot more money for it than they otherwise would have. This is insane! He likes to throw around the word 'treason' when he talks about his political opponents, but how does 'aiding and abetting America's enemy in an active war' not qualify? Just imagine for one tiny second what Republicans would have said if a Democratic president had done such a thing."

 

   Too, too funny

Speaking of the enemy, Iran has been doing some world-class Trump-trolling of late.

"Iranian leaders are now just openly mocking Trump. A spokesman for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps released a video where he used both the phrases: 'Hey Trump -- you are fired!' as well as: 'Thank you for your attention to this matter.' Earlier in the week, when Trump blustered about holding negotiations with the Iranians, the speaker of Iran's parliament reacted with some more mockery: 'Fake news is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the U.S. and Israel are trapped.' They certainly do know exactly what to say to get under Trump's skin, don't they?"

 

   What this money could be doing

To give credit where it is due, these all came from an article Nicholas Kristof wrote for the New York Times that points out the many, many things we could be doing with the money we are paying for Trump's War (which Kristof figures is costing us $1.3 million per minute). The whole article is worth reading, but here is a three-for-one talking point from it (because we just couldn't narrow it down to just one), for Democrats to make the case that this money could have been better spent (emphasis in original):

• For a bit more than two weeks of this war, we could offer free college education to every American family earning less than $125,000 annually, at a cost of around $30 billion a year.
• For less than three weeks of war, or $35 billion, we could run a nationwide pre-K program for 3- and 4-year-olds.
• For about $34 billion a year, less than three weeks of war, we could restore health insurance subsidies that the Trump administration let expire last year. One analysis predicted an additional 8,800 preventable American deaths as a result.

-- Chris Weigant

 

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Cross-posted at: Democratic Underground