Donald Trump has ramped up his war of choice once again, bombing Iran on a nightly basis while Iran launches missiles at U.S. military installations and other targets in the region. Sadly, four more American soldiers lost their lives as a result of all this crossfire. And the war seems to be escalating, as the Houthis in Yemen have now entered the fray by blocking the strait at the southern end of the Red Sea to any Saudi ships. All of this has caused oil prices to spike above $100 per barrel once again, and gas prices here in America to spike to over four bucks a gallon once again.

It's worth noting that, as of this point, there is no end in sight to any of this. Nobody's talking about "offramps," and while ceasefire proposals seem to have been exchanged there are no talks or other negotiations going on (that have been publicly disclosed, at any rate).

The Pentagon seems to be trying to downplay the human costs of the war, both by hiding the extent of non-lethal injuries to soldiers as well as removing those four dead soldiers from their official count of war deaths (because, according to them, they don't count because Trump announced a ceasefire -- meaning the war was officially already over when those Iranian missiles killed them). There is no other word for this kind of data manipulation than "Orwellian," folks.

Trump is out there bizarrely bragging that only 18 servicemembers have died, and that nobody should be concerned about it until it reaches the death tolls from Vietnam or World War II. He also claimed that the four dead soldiers were all big fans of his war of choice, with absolutely no evidence to back that claim up. Some Gold Star families called Trump out on this one, but the media largely just yawned at Trump's stunning disrespect.

He's also trying to demonize the enemy, but had a "senior moment" when doing so. Here he is, trying to highlight how the evil Iranian leaders killed protesters before the war started: "Young kids. They kill 'em. They kill 'em like they're... like they're... uhh... candy." Um, excuse me? What? How did "candy" become a measure of indiscriminate killing? Once again, the mainstream media didn't make a big deal out of this bizarre metaphor attempt (if Joe Biden had said something that weird it would have generated at least a solid week of reporting on his mental state, please remember).

Speaking of mental states, it was reported this week that the U.S. intelligence agencies warned Trump that continued bombing of Iran simply was not going to change their leaders' attitudes towards the war or towards the negotiations to end it. But that's not stopping Trump from trying anyway.

Meanwhile, over in Yemen, the Houthis announced that the Bab el-Mandeb Strait would be closed to any ships from Saudi Arabia. They've since fired upon two ships, showing they are serious. Other ships are turning around and heading away from the Strait, showing that the warnings are having the desired effect on shipping. Of course, the Red Sea has a northern exit (through the Suez Canal), but most of the oil being shipped from Saudi Arabia's west coast ultimately winds up in South Asia. Having to go through the Suez Canal means the tankers will have to sail all the way around Africa, adding thousands of miles to their journey.

This has all pushed the price of oil upwards once again. American motorists are now paying a nationwide average of around $4.10 per gallon, up from just below $3.75 at the beginning of July. And energy experts are warning that prices could continue to drastically climb even beyond the highs set back in May, when gas was selling for more than $4.55 per gallon. Back then the price didn't go any higher because of various moves made on the world oil markets, but those possibilities are almost exhausted now (for instance, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve is just about tapped out, making future releases of oil from it impossible). At the very least, it now looks like gas prices will remain very high at least through the month of August, even if the war calms down again. And if a ceasefire isn't reached by then, experts are warning of gas prices hitting $4.50 or even $5.00 a gallon in September.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is just flat-out lying about energy prices. Here is some praise for the Dear Leader from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum:

"We're already saving Americans billions of dollars because we've got business leaders like President Trump driving our energy policy," Burgum said.

He also noted that oil and gas prices will begin to decline today because of Trump's energy policies, citing potential ways to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, but offered few details on how that would happen.

"President Trump is the one leader who knows how to get prices down," Burgum said.

None of that is true, obviously. Americans have not saved "billions of dollars" on energy costs, and Trump has no clue what to do about high oil prices, other than continue his war of choice that is raising them even further. His flunkies can parrot the word "plummeting" all they want (they are all predicting that gas prices will instantly "plummet" once Trump magically ends the war), but that's no help when you have to fill your car up right now.

Republicans in Congress hoping to get re-elected are terrified at all of this, it is worth noting. They can read the polls, which are now showing that even Trump voters have soured on the war. Overall, Trump's approval ratings are hitting new historic lows, which usually indicates that his party is going to get trounced in the midterms. And the higher the price of gas goes, the more likely that is to happen. Enough Republicans in the House just voted for a second time to pass a measure designed to force Trump to end the war (although a similar measure failed in the Senate).

Donald Trump is either completely clueless about all this fallout from his war of choice, or he simply does not care about his own party's prospects in the midterms. Last week, he gave a rare primetime address, in the middle of his renewed war, to once again whine about how the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" from him (spoiler alert: it wasn't). He said he was releasing declassified documents showing China had somehow rigged the election against him, except when people examined these documents, they said nothing of the sort. Trump's claims were quickly debunked by fact-checkers, and Trump's big speech was largely just ignored (because it was such a nothingburger) by everyone -- including even by his own Republicans and Fox News. Which they should, because whining and making false claims about an election that happened six years ago isn't going to help the GOP's chances in November one bit.

Everyone is hoping for some sort of offramp to all of this, of course. But the signals from Washington and Tehran aren't helping. Threats of death and destruction are being lobbed from both sides, and without even a formal process of talks being in place a ceasefire looks a long way away at this point.

Trump entered this war thinking the whole thing would be wrapped up in days -- a few weeks, at the longest. That was back in February. He had no plan for a long-term conflict. He didn't believe the Iranians would block the Strait of Hormuz. He thought they'd just roll over and surrender. And now we're all paying the price for his shortsightedness, and probably will continue to pay that price for a long time to come.

Nobody's sure how it will all work out in the end, but up in Maine one Democrat had a very impressive week indeed.

In the aftermath of the collapse of Graham Platner's Senate campaign, the Maine Democratic Party had a scant few weeks to agree on a new nominee to appear on November's ballot. Multiple candidates put their names forward, but last weekend Troy Jackson absolutely locked up the nomination. His victory was so apparent that all the other candidates immediately dropped out of the race.

The process the party leaders had hastily set up was supposed to have two parts: caucuses in every county to select delegates, and then a convention the following weekend where the delegates and party insiders would meet and vote on all the candidates. Jackson, however, was heavily supported by Maine Unions, who are highly effective in political organizing. The foreshortened nature of the whole thing meant all the other candidates were nowhere near as organized as Jackson, and he wound up with the lion's share of all the delegates. This immediately led to calls for party unity from all the other candidates:

Such was the scale of Mr. [Troy] Jackson's victories at the Saturday meetings that before any Sunday sessions began, his chief progressive rival, Shenna Bellows, the Maine secretary of state, ended her campaign. By dinnertime, the top moderate in the race, Dr. Nirav Shah, the state's former public health director, also suspended his campaign and endorsed Mr. Jackson, as did Dan Kleban, a local beer magnate, and Jordan Wood, a former congressional aide.

. . .

"This has been an unprecedented nominating process, compressed into days instead of months, and I'm grateful to every volunteer who worked around the clock for this movement," Ms. Bellows said. "That energy is exactly what we need to beat Susan Collins in November -- and Democrats don't have a day to waste in unifying around that shared goal."

Dr. Shah pleaded with Democrats to unite behind Mr. Jackson.

"Susan Collins will not be defeated without a united Democratic Party," he said. "We cannot unite without treating one another with respect. No matter whom you supported in this race, I urge us all to remember that in the weeks ahead."

That's pretty impressive, you've got to admit.

Jackson is running on a very progressive platform, and he hails from northern Maine, where he used to be a lumberjack. This could help Jackson convince the supporters of Platner to get behind him, although he's only got a few short months to do so.

Susan Collins is a formidable force in Maine politics, so defeating her is going to be tough to do. This has all happened so quickly that the polling will take a few weeks to catch up. Democrats everywhere are going to be watching that poll data as it starts to come in, because as stated nobody really knows what this foreshortened nomination process is going to mean in November.

For this week, however, Troy Jackson absolutely swept the hastily-assembled nominating process, and will be officially nominated at the party convention that will take place this weekend. Taking the place of Graham Platner is going to be a hard thing to do (since Platner generated so much genuine voter enthusiasm), but it is certainly possible. For now, Troy Jackson is off to a very impressive start, which is why he's the obvious choice for Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week.

[Troy Jackson is currently a private citizen, and we have a blanket rule not to link to campaign websites, so you'll have to search his contact information for yourselves if you'd like to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]

A panel of the Democratic National Committee announced today that they were making a recommendation to the rest of the D.N.C. that South Carolina should be the first state to vote in the 2028 Democratic primary calendar. Maybe it's just us, but we found this to be disappointing.

Democrats have been tinkering with the early-voting calendar for a few election cycles now, dethroning Iowa and New Hampshire from their first-in-the-nation status. There were two stated reasons for doing this: elevating the diversity of the party, and giving up on states that had become so red that they weren't even feasibly in play in the general election. The first of those applied to both states, as both Iowa and New Hampshire are overwhelmingly White. The second applied only to Iowa, which was also snubbed because they screwed up so badly in a previous presidential primary cycle.

But South Carolina only solves one of those issues. It does have a very high percentage of Black voters, but it is also completely out of play in the general election. It is not a purple state, it is deep red. So all the money that will be spent on ads and campaigning in South Carolina will give Democrats no advantage in November.

There are other states with large Black populations that could have been considered, but South Carolina has traditionally been the first state in the Deep South to vote on the primary calendar. But why should that make a difference, when Democrats are booting out Iowa and New Hampshire?

The D.N.C. panel also released a list of other states they recommended be awarded early primary calendar slots: New Hampshire, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, and Virginia. Nevada had been in the running for first place, since it has a very high proportion of Latino votes, but South Carolina won out in the end. Here is the calendar the committee recommended:

The proposed calendar set South Carolina with its primary on Jan. 22, 2028, followed by Nevada on Feb. 1; New Hampshire on Feb. 8; New Mexico on Feb. 15; Michigan on Feb. 22; and Virginia on Feb. 29.

These other five states are a lot more in play in November. Michigan in particular could be key to any Democrat's chances of winning a presidential election. New Mexico and (to a lesser degree) Virginia are on the blue side of the purple scale, but New Hampshire and Nevada are not guaranteed to vote Democratic, so it makes sense to include them. The whole list was supposed to balance demographics and geography, to provide a better mix of voters in the crucial early states.

But South Carolina simply doesn't belong in first place. It is the reddest state on that list. There is roughly a zero percent chance that a Democrat could win the state in the general election. That cannot be said of any of the other states on the list, which is why the choice of South Carolina is so disappointing.

Out of that whole list, we would have chosen Michigan to go first. The Midwest has many crucial swing states (what used to be called "the big blue wall" before they voted for Trump), and so their opinions about which is the best Democratic candidate should have top billing, instead of being relegated to fifth place.

We have no idea how other Democrats are reacting to the South Carolina decision, so we may be the only ones expressing dismay over it. The state is not going to be a factor in the general election, so it makes very little sense to us to have it at the start of the campaign calendar. So we have to give this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week to the 26 members of the D.N.C.'s bylaws committee (out of a total of 49 of them) who voted for South Carolina to go first in the 2028 Democratic primaries.

[Contact the Democratic National Committee via their official contact page, to let them know what you think of their actions.]

Volume 849 (7/24/26)

We've got a mixed bag of talking points this week, with one at the end where you can make up your own rude joke at the end of it.

   Promises made, promises broken

Trump is now even losing his own MAGA supporters over his ill-conceived war, so it's time for Democrats to pile on in a big way.

"Remember how Trump campaigned on 'No more forever wars'? Remember that? Remember when he promised everyone he'd magically make the price of gasoline go down -- by half? Instead, Trump started a war of choice with Iran -- even though they posed no imminent threat to us whatsoever -- and oversaw the price of gasoline going up by over fifty percent. The price is now well over four bucks a gallon, and it is increasing quickly with every passing day. You all know this, because every time you fill your car up you are being charged a war tax for Trump's reckless adventure. Trump made big promises to the voters, but he lied. Promises made, promises broken -- that's what we all got instead."

   Let's hike inflation too!

Here we go again....

"Trump also thinks the price of everything isn't going up fast enough -- because otherwise why would he be slapping tariffs on every country he can right now? This is a tax on American companies and American consumers, folks. It raises the cost of almost everything you buy. But Trump simply doesn't care. He thinks high inflation is just dandy, and he could not care less how much more you have to pay for everything as a result of his foolishness."

   Not worth the paper it's printed on

Yet another example of Trump doing a face-plant on the world stage.

"With Donald Trump in charge, nobody in the rest of the world trusts the United States any more. And why should they? Trump changes his mind on a whim, and by doing so tosses out the window any previous agreements he (or any other president) has made. This week, he did so with blinding speed. He announced a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, and then the very next day he blew the entire effort up. Trump got a bee in his bonnet and announced there would be a new condition for the deal -- one that hadn't been included in the agreed-upon text at all. If the Saudis didn't join the Abraham Accords, the deal was off, Trump announced. Is it any wonder the Iranians are leery of any deal with America right now? Saudi Arabia is supposed to be our close ally, and Trump just slapped them in the face on the world stage. The upshot is that any deal with Donald Trump isn't worth the paper it is printed on, period. Because Trump could change his mind at any time -- so why even bother striking any deal with him? It's an exercise in futility."

   A.I. not just taking your jobs away, you are paying for it too

This is one of those issues that both political parties are terrified of addressing, while the voters (of both parties) are getting increasingly outraged over. Democrats would do themselves a world of good by taking a stance on it before the midterms.

"Artificial intelligence programs are coming for people's jobs. Good, high-paying white-collar jobs are disappearing because A.I. programs can perform them just as good as employees (or so the business owners believe). But what's truly galling about all this is that A.I. has spawned a construction craze to build more and more data centers all across America. And as more and more people are finding out, they are not "good corporate citizens." They will muscle their way into town and county councils and get approval for data centers placed right next to residential homes, and they don't care a bit about lowering property values or annoying their neighbors. But the thing that makes me angriest is that these data centers suck up so much electricity that it hikes rates for all ratepayers. So you wind up paying the price in your monthly power bill for the very thing that is destroying good jobs all across America. I am calling for a national law that mandates any new data center has to build a new power plant to cover all of its electrical needs before it can begin operation -- so that their enormous energy needs don't impact other consumers at all. This seems not only fair, but necessary."

   Very silly indeed

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was asked recently about whether she had concerns that "this slippery slope towards socialism inevitably ends up as a full-blown communism." The question was asked because Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans have come up with the strategy of painting the entire Democratic Party as communists (which is pretty laughable, but whatever...). Her answer is worth quoting in full, because it is such a good rebuttal of this nonsense:

No. I'm not concerned about America turning into a communist country in like a year. I think that's very silly.

Just think about how impossible it has been to raise the minimum wage in America in 10, 15, 20 years. We can't even raise the minimum wage. Do Republicans really think that this stuff is going to happen? No, they don't. They're trying to scare people because they don't want us talking about the fact that we all have a right to health care in this country.

So they want to call it communist, and they want to call everything they don't like communist. Because if people actually wake up to the fact that their elected officials are screwing them over when they get here, then they're going to realize that they deserve better and that health care as a right isn't crazy, it isn't pie in the sky.

They want to call this stuff communist because they don't want us to realize that the rest of the developed world has guaranteed health care. So they want to call it communist because they don't want you to know that Germany, Italy, the U.K., Canada, everybody else has it better than us, and we spend the most amount of money for the worst care in the modern developed world.

   Make measles great again?

This isn't getting the attention it deserves.

"Donald Trump put a total quack in as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the results were eminently predictable. If you put an anti-vaxxer in charge of the nation's health services, then you can bet your bottom dollar disease is going to spread. The number of measles cases in America just hit a 35-year high -- and it is only July. That means we still have five more months in which hundreds of people will also get sick -- from a disease with a perfectly good vaccine. Robert F. Kennedy Junior champions the slogan 'Make America Healthy Again,' but in reality he is overseeing the worst outbreak of measles since the early 1990s. That's what you get when you put a total quack in power instead of someone who knows what they are doing. It's not 'Make America Healthy Again,' instead it is 'Make Measles Great Again.' And it was all largely preventable -- that's the real tragedy here."

   Trump finds out what people think of him once again

This one is just for fun, obviously.

"Donald Trump once again found out what people from all over the planet think of him, when he walked onto the pitch to award the trophy in the World Cup this week. He was greeted with ear-splitting boos, but he just didn't get the message. Once again, after handing the trophy to the team, Trump just stood onstage cluelessly. The head of FIFA eventually did manage to yank Trump out of the celebration, and then stood Trump over to the side where gold-colored confetti rained down upon him. Which somehow seemed a more fitting image -- Trump under a golden shower of confetti. Make of that what you will...."

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Cross-posted at: Democratic Underground