The Republican Party no longer sees Donald Trump as its golden goose.With midterms around the corner, the president’s allies are reportedly urging Republican candidates to break from Trump’s rhetoric on the Iran war in order to save their election odds.“The understanding is pretty damn implicit: The president is going to say what the president is going to say,” a Republican operative working on the party’s midterm races told MS NOW on the condition of anonymity. “You’re not going to have candidates or lawmakers running out to defend the president’s handling of the economy or the war—polling shows that most people don’t agree with his handling.”The Iran war has done nothing good for America in the 21 weeks since it began. The conflict has so far killed at least 18 U.S. service members and wounded more than 600 others. It has also taken an enormous toll on daily life in the U.S., inflaming the cost of practically everything as shipping companies contend with rising oil costs. As a result, Trump’s approval rating has plummeted, with trust and loyalty rattled even within his base, which is reportedly losing patience with the unyielding violence.The White House is now basically cutting its losses, allowing midterm-bound Republicans the opportunity to save themselves from Trump’s sinking ship.“There is less paranoia and more autonomy,” a Republican strategist in Michigan familiar with the national and regional communications of the party told MS NOW. “[Trump] is still doing the work for the incumbents, but giving them space without lashing out.”Another Republican operative told the network that “nuance has been adopted in Trump 2.0 that wasn’t in 1.0,” noting that if a candidate is in a state “where he can get someone better and more loyal, he’ll do it,” but “if you’re in a state where you’re the best he can get, there’s a deeper comprehension of that reality.”A fourth GOP operative familiar with the White House’s strategy referred to debates on Iran as a “Democrat trap.” “If a candidate lets their race become a referendum on Iran, that’s a mistake,” they said.
News Desk, The Cradle. Amid fears of depleted missile stocks, further escalation. President Trump has called off a major expansion of attacks on the Islamic Republic following warnings from his advisors on Friday. The US has paused its strikes on Iran for the past two days after 13 straight days of attacks, amid concerns that stocks […]
Jake Johnson Common Dreams Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died earlier this month at the age of 71, was never quiet about his desire for a military assault on Iran. But previously unreleased footage, filmed for a documentary that was in the works before the South Carolina lawmaker’s death, shows Graham reacting with unrestrained jubilance to President Donald […]
The Trump administration’s expanding confrontation with Iran is increasingly exposing the limits of military power in a rapidly changing global order. What began as an effort to pressure Tehran has, according to Iranian political analyst and former nuclear negotiator adviser Seyed Mohammad Marandi, evolved into a widening regional conflict in which Washington faces diminishing options […]
In January, President Trump told the media that his deadly extrajudicial strikes on alleged “drug boats” in the Caribbean had maritime drug flow “down 97 percent.” New reporting from The Washington Post shows that was a lie. After over 60 strikes, more than 200 people are dead with no trial, and the Drug Enforcement Administration has confirmed that the flow of cocaine into the U.S. has not been impeded at all.Instead of stopping shipments, traffickers have just changed their strategies, taking larger vessels or even planes to circumvent international waters, the DEA found.“The business is so extraordinarily profitable that the cartels do not mind paying freight costs that are five or even 10 times higher,” one naval intelligence official from Ecuador said. “They know that while the United States may destroy one speedboat, they will successfully get 10 semisubmersibles—or other speedboats that evade detection—through.”“When you squeeze the balloon on one side, it always expands on the other side,” an anonymous DEA official told the Post. “They always find the weak spots and exploit them.” While DEA officials noted that prices rose after the first two months of strikes, smugglers “adapted to the intensified pressure,” and neither supply nor price had “been noticeably affected.”In April, just over seven months into the strikes, Trump wrote that “98.2% of Drugs coming into the U.S. by Ocean or Sea have STOPPED!” It’s unclear where he got that number from.Perhaps most troubling of all is the 221 people killed by the U.S. government without any kind of trial or legal process. There’s no way we even know for sure that they were “narcoterrorists”—these could have very well been innocent people, their deaths simply serving as fodder for Trump to drum up fear and resentment toward Latin America.
Israeli settlers torched two mosques over the weekend in a new wave of violence targeting Palestinian towns and villages across the occupied West Bank. Meanwhile, Israeli military forces on Saturday detained over 70 Palestinians in raids across the occupied territory. This follows the killing of at least four Palestinians in the village of Tal on Friday, when Israeli settlers and soldiers opened fire on residents attempting to protect their homes; two Israelis were also killed.
Palestinian journalist Mariam Barghouti says the Israeli army and Israeli settlers “should not be seen as separate” as they carry out “a familiar pattern of collective punishment.” She also stresses that anti-Palestinian violence in the occupied West Bank cannot be divorced from Israeli repression in Jerusalem and its genocide in Gaza.
“This is a colonial regime that is engaging in crimes against humanity,” says Barghouti. “How those crimes look may differ, but in the end they serve the same purpose, and that is ethnically cleansing Palestinians in order to build this Greater Israel in the region.”