“Don’t Have a Plan”: Republicans Panic as Trump Ramps Up in Iran

The president’s inability to resolve the Iran war is spelling disaster for endangered Republican lawmakers this November.

The U.S. and Iran continued to exchange strikes this week, pushing the prospect of a potential peace deal further out of reach. The escalating conflict has killed four more American service members and sent gas prices shooting back up.

That’s put incumbent Republicans in a bind: The party already had a short list of accomplishments to curry favor with voters ahead of the midterm elections. Now, even races once thought to be safe zones for the conservative party are in doubt. Battleground areas now include Iowa, Alaska, and Ohio, as well as House districts that Donald Trump carried by double digits in 2024.

“We’re preparing for the bottom to fall out,” one GOP operative working on midterm races told Politico Playbook Wednesday. “Republicans are running out of runway here to improve their political fortunes before November.”

The war has taken an enormous toll on American life, inflaming the cost of practically everything as shipping companies contend with rising oil prices. Iowa Democratic state Representative Josh Turek—who is running for the Hawkeye State’s Senate seat—told Politico that the war has become a touchstone for his campaign.

“Everywhere I’m going—it doesn’t matter, urban or rural areas—people are telling me they’re struggling just to keep food on the table, a roof above their head, and now with this unnecessary war in Iran, we’re looking at being able to afford gas,” Turek said.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly rejected the idea that Trump’s scoresheet was negatively impacting Republican races, contrasting his “record of success” on national security issues with an alleged Democratic interest in “transgender surgeries for children.”

But off the record, people around the president aren’t so confident that his influence on the upcoming races is a good thing. One unnamed person close to the White House told Politico that the administration had badly mismanaged the war, and that the conflict was largely driven by Trump’s inability to see that he’d lost.

“They don’t have a plan here,” the person told Politico.

The source warned that a ground invasion—which Trump has repeatedly floated and Tehran has welcomed—could spark another long and inconclusive Middle East war that “runs the risk of ruining his second term.”

“This is a classic escalation trap,” they said.

President Donald Trump threatened Wednesday to keep committing war crimes against Iran in order to stop attacks in the Strait of Hormuz.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump vowed to destroy “one bridge or power plant” for every time Iran attacks a ship in the Strait of Hormuz.

Targeting civilian infrastructure is prohibited by international humanitarian law. Attacking a power plant would cause disproportionate harm to Iranian civilians.

If Trump does follow through on his threat, it wouldn’t be the first time the U.S. military has committed war crimes in the president’s military campaign against Iran.

The U.S. military has reportedly already bombed a nuclear power plant, executed a deadly double-tap strike on a bridge, violated the rules of engagement, and killed dozens of children at a primary school.

Trump’s turn to war crimes is a clear example of his failed negotiation tactics. The president’s plan seems to be to just keep bombing until the other side gives up. Meanwhile, the U.S. military is running out of weapons and money.

Trump’s threat to escalate these lawless strikes comes as the death toll of U.S. service members has risen to 18, with hundreds more injured.

The Trump administration has raked in about $13 billion after taking over Venezuela’s oil exports in the wake of its kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, according to a Financial Times analysis. But six months later, and one month after two devastating earthquakes, that money is nowhere to be found.

When Trump first seized the “millions of barrels” of oil back in January, he assumed complete control. His administration eventually proclaimed that it would use any profit from the sales for “the benefit of the American people and the Venezuelan people.” The State Department has since claimed that “billions of dollars have been disbursed to the Venezuelan economy” and that “financial monitoring is under way to ensure funds benefit the Venezuelan people.”

But none of that has been proven to be true. The Financial Times reported Wednesday that there has been no evidence of oil money going back into the hands of the Venezuelans Trump claimed to care for, and that Venezuela’s first-quarter gross domestic product was the lowest it’s been in five years.

“Trump’s invasion of Venezuela has been about oil, power, and graft from the very beginning, with billions of dollars in Venezuelan oil revenue being controlled by the Trump administration without transparency or safeguards,” Democratic Representative Joaquin Castro told the FT, adding that all of Congress had been “kept in the dark” by the Trump administration. And on Tuesday, Republican Representative María Elvira Salazar called on Trump to make the transactions known, citing “the importance of transparency over where the money is going.”

It seems clear that the most corrupt president in history is withholding oil revenue from Venezuelans who badly need it, as oil makes up nearly a quarter of the entire country’s GDP. In January, Semafor reported that Trump would be keeping proceeds from the first $500 million sale of Venezuelan oil in an offshore bank account based in Qatar. It might be worth checking up on that account.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s call for the federal government to arrest Israeli Prime Minister and suspected war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu when he visits New York has caused the far right to lose their minds. 

Mamdani posted a video on social media Tuesday night laying out the International Criminal Court’s charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity against Netanyahu, noting that while the city couldn’t arrest him, the U.S. government should. That video set off MAGA politicians and the far right. 

“Would be easy to say NY Mayor is just an ignorant bigot, but he is not dumb. He’s an evil anti-Semite who deliberately lies about serious things like ‘genocide’ to stoke Jew hate. If anyone should be arrested, it’s the Mayor of NY for incitement. NYC should be ashamed,” U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee posted. 

“The same crowd that rushes to condemn Israel never has much to say about the terrorists who started the war, massacred civilians, raped women, kidnapped children, and still hide behind their own people. Mamdani wants the headline that comes from attacking Netanyahu, not the consistency that comes with confronting Hamas,” Senator Tim Scott complained, calling Mamdani’s words “ridiculous.” 

Representative Mike Lawler tried to label Mamdani hypocritical for only calling for Netanyahu’s arrest, while opposing the Trump administration’s arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. “Sadly, he has not called for the arrest of Putin, Xi, the Ayatollah, or any other enemy of America,” Lawler whined. But Mamdani has said he thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin should be arrested, and the leaders of Iran and China don’t have arrest warrants from the ICC. 

Meanwhile, Islamophobic Representative Randy Fine simply responded with, “You are a Muslim terrorist.”  

Multiple international organizations have joined the ICC in calling Netanyahu and Israel’s massacre of Gaza a genocide, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.  

Even though Mamdani’s post was symbolic, it still drove conservatives nuts because they refuse to acknowledge Palestinians as human beings, let alone acknowledge the horrific crimes Israel has committed in Gaza since 2023. These people, along with President Trump, are blocking any sort of accountability for the destruction of Gaza and the murder of tens of thousands of innocent people. 

President Donald Trump is trying to use the number of U.S. service members he’s gotten killed to sell Americans on his war with Iran.

No sooner had the American death toll risen to 18 than the president started bragging that their deaths weren’t such a bad thing.

“Afghanistan War: 20 years, 2,000 DEAD. Iraq War: 9 years, 4,600 DEAD. Vietnam War: 19 years and 5 months, 58,220 DEAD. Korean War: 3 years and 1 month, 36,574 DEAD. Venezuela War: 1 day, 0 DEAD. Iran Military Conflict: 4 months, 18 DEAD,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Tuesday.

This isn’t the first time Trump has used the deaths of U.S. service members to hype himself up.

At the first dignified transfer in March, Trump sported a gaudy $55 gold-embroidered “USA” baseball cap. The second dignified transfer he skipped altogether. The third was used for content—against the wishes of the families of the deceased.

Following the collapse of Trump’s ceasefire deal, at least four U.S. service members have been killed, bringing the official death toll to 18. Roughly 500 U.S. service members have been injured, according to the Department of Defense.