Trump Accidentally Admits to Epic Iran Blunder as War Takes Worse Turn

 

Today: "Podcast: Trump Accidentally Admits to Epic Iran Blunder as War Takes Worse Turn" Plus, the Supreme Court seems set to make bribery even easier; Blue Governors are backtracking on fossil fuels; one "lucky" trader made $1 Million on Polymarket Iran bets; and more... Seems Like Trump May End This War Soon. What Will It Have Been Worth? Spooked by a falling stock market and rising gas prices, the president appears eager to find an off-ramp. He will have accomplished nothing but needless destruction and empowering our enemies. By Michael Tomasky

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Will the Supreme Court Make Bribery Even Easier? The high court's campaign to provide cover to the quid pro quo arrangement of corrupt politicians seems set to continue. By Matt Ford A Shocking Third Report Gives U.S. Democracy Another Terrible Score Freedom House's verdict was bad. V-Dem's was worse. And today, Bright Line Watch's is also dire. But we can still turn it around. By Perry Bacon excerpt:              In contrast, V-Dem, a Sweden-based group that has also assessed countries’ levels of democracy for decades, went there in its recent report, delivering a formal downgrade to the United States. V-Dem designates countries as either closed autocracy, electoral autocracy, electoral democracy, or liberal democracy. Electoral democracies have free and fair elections and basic freedoms for all citizens. Liberal democracy, according to V-Dem, goes further and also includes real checks on executive power and a strong rule of law. I suspect most Americans not enthralled with Trump want the U.S. to be a full-fledged liberal democracy. But alas: V-Dem declared for the first time in decades that the United States is no longer a liberal democracy and is instead simply an electoral one. The V-Dem report was scathing, in my view more forthrightly stating the radicalism of the Trump administration in 2025 (even compared to 2017–2021) than the other two reports. (I suspect experts from outside the United States are willing to be more frank because they are not cowed by Republican claims that academics and other experts are biased against conservatives.) V-Dem argued that U.S. democracy has diminished to levels similar to its state in 1965. I repeat, 1965. Jim Crow was ending then. V-Dem said that according to its rankings, the U.S. dropped from the twentieth-most democratic of the 179 nations it measures to the fifty-first in Trump’s first year. By V-Dem’s formal scores, the U.S. declined from 0.75 under Biden to 0.57 under Trump, a 24 percent decline. Here’s the most chilling statistic: According to V-Dem’s measures, Trump has plunged the United States in an authoritarian direction at a much faster rate than Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, India’s Narendra Modi, and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan did in their respective nations. Those are the quintessential authoritarians of this era. And Trump is outdoing them all. V-Dem’s list of Trump’s antidemocratic acts is similar to those of Freedom House and Bright Watch. V-Dem was just more willing to draw out the obvious conclusions—that this is the “most dramatic decline in American history” of its democracy, that Trump is executing a “rapid and aggressive concentration of powers in the presidency.” AI Chatbots Are Unleashing Violence Among Kids With Big Tech writing its own rules, the absence of adequate safety regulations has already led to harrowing examples of real-world harm. By Luke Barnes GOVERNANCE BY POLITICAL PANIC IS NOT APPROPRIATE OR JUSTIFIED!  MASSACHUSETTS HAS A PROGRAM CALLED MASS SAVE THAT FUNDS  ENERGY EFFICIENCY PROJECTS - IT WAS SLASHED IN THE MOST RECENT  PROPOSALS - THAT'S NOT A SOLUTION!  YEARS AGO, WE REPLACED 2 "ALWAYS ON LIGHTS" with LEDS...the following month, the BILL dropped $5 - not bad for a $2 INVESTMENT!  Until recently, we were able to purchase LEDs for $1 each...until TRUMP TARIFFS kicked in. (Current BUILDING CODES mandate LEDs and much else.) TRUMP eliminated ENERGY STAR RATINGS that we used to purchase the most efficient appliances that enabled us to reduce our ENERGY CONSUMPTION.  Isn't this about PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY?  ENERGY EXPERTS say we can reduce our consumption by 23% for free or at low cost....how many do it?   Lots of the solutions are SIMPLE! All of our electronics are on SURGE PROTECTORS - when they're OFF - they're OFF!  How many of MASSACHUSETTS Older homes have uninsulated roofs that  MELT THE SNOW?  WHO IS PROPOSING: REDUCE YOUR CONSUMPTION?  It can be done EASILY and inexpensively!  I've shared the story of a man who used BUBBLE WRAP to cover his SLIDING GLASS DOOR - it allowed the light in, but stopped the ENERGY TRANSMISSION.  SIMPLE IDEAS are out there! Blue Governors Are Tacking Rightward on Fossil Fuels Governors like Healey, Hochul, and Lamont portray their backtracking as a pragmatic solution to affordability issues. Others say it doesn't make economic sense—and betrays key constituents. By Will Peischel excerpt:  Last week, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey held a press conference to address concerns around spiking utility bills. She touted growing wind and solar industries as crucial solutions to the affordability crisis, but also importing more fracked gas from out of state. “We have gas pipeline expansion on the Algonquin—that’s good!” she said from her podium, referencing a $300 million project to beef up natural gas infrastructure in the state via Enbridge’s Algonquin Gas Transmission Pipeline. “We need to continue to find more ways to bring energy in, and anything around gas pipelines that works out well with the ratepayers and is consistent with our regulations we’ll welcome.” Not long ago, this cozying up to fossil fuel in the state would have bewildered constituents of most political shades. After all, it was Republican Governor Charlie Baker who signed the 2021 law directing Massachusetts to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, pivoting away from fossil fuels. One year later, Healey, then the state’s attorney general, bragged about sinking proposed pipeline expansion plans. “Remember,” she reminded her audience, “I stopped two gas pipelines from coming into this state.” (Governor Healey’s office didn’t respond to a list of questions sent over email.) OFFSHORE WINDFARMS THAT TRUMP OPPOSED AND INTERRUPTED WOULD POWER MORE THAN 1 MILLION HOMES!  Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut all began investing heavily in large offshore wind farm projects years ago—each able to provide around a gigawatt of clean, local energy to the grid. But over the last year, the Trump administration has sought to kill them through litigation and regulatory orders, most recently through a January work stoppage handed down by the Interior Department. While the offshore wind farms currently under construction have been allowed to continue after gaining injunctions in federal court, developers have canceled future wind projects, taking billions’ worth of energy investments with them. Questions of what will plug the gap they leave remain unanswered.

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Trump Voted By Mail Again While Blasting It It's only "cheating" when Democrats do it, apparently. By Edith Olmsted Bovino Called Immigrants Trash but Considered Himself a Minority The ex–Border Patrol chief is unrepentant as he nears retirement. By Malcolm Ferguson excerpt:  Former Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino—the man who oversaw President Trump’s violent immigration crackdown and thinks Latino immigrants are “scum,” “filth,” and “trash”—identifies as Native American. His family is Italian American, and he is not in any official tribal registry. In several interviews with Bovino ahead of his retirement, The New York Times reported that Bovino listed his race as “Native American” on legal documents with Cherokee as his tribe, even gifting agents tomahawks as prizes for good work. Bovino told the Times that he has called himself Cherokee since he was 8 years old. Bovino’s statement is tenuous at best, and the families he relentlessly brutalized and surveilled for over a year have a much more legitimate claim to American indigeneity than he does. The former Border Patrol chief continues to double down on all of the policies that led to federal agents killing two Americans in the street and his eventual firing, telling the Times he wanted “total border domination.” What subscribers are reading: One "Lucky" Trader Made $1 Million on Polymarket Iran Bets By Finn Hartnett What the James Talarico Vegan Story Reveals About U.S. Politics By Jan Dutkiewicz ICE Arrests Crying Woman at Airport as Chaos Grows Nationwide By Malcolm Ferguson Trump Throws Pete Hegseth Under the Bus as Iran War Spirals It looks like the president has found a new scapegoat for the Iran war. By Malcolm Ferguson Podcast: Trump Accidentally Admits to Epic Iran Blunder as War Takes Worse Turn The Daily Blast With Greg Sargent Donald Trump's war on Iran appears to be a fiasco, and speaking to reporters, he made a surprising claim: He insisted no one anticipated that Iran would attack other countries in an effort to widen the war. But this was indeed widely expected, and amusingly, in saying that, Trump revealed that he didn't anticipate it. That's a striking admission about his own lack of foresight. Which captures something broader: On many fronts, Trump didn't prepare for eventualities that most experts fully did anticipate. Now Trump is lurching in all directions: First he threatened to bomb Iranian electric plants, then backtracked while claiming that "very strong talks" were underway, but Iran then flatly denied that. We talked to foreign policy expert Matt Duss, author of a piece on the intellectual failings behind this debacle. He explains why the latest developments are unnerving, how Trump's personal and ideological shortcomings are working against America, and what he really revealed with that odd admission of failure. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here. Listen to the episode here. Read the transcript here.

There Will Be No Post-Presidential Peace for Donald Trump The president and his allies will face impeachments, lawsuits, and maybe even The Hague. By Matt Ford Read now

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