2 Months Before Voting Begins Trump Is Raising Gas Prices, Levying New Tariffs, Losing His War, And Ensuring Millions Lose Benefits And Care

Early voting begins in Virginia on September 18th and in many states across the country soon after. Be sure to make your plan to vote early today, and get everyone you know to join you!

Greetings all. When things aren’t working for a President they usually course correct, find a better path, do things that are popular. This week Trump has chosen to double down on his major initiatives that are doing so much harm to the country, and making him historically unpopular. It’s a bit stunning to see. Let’s review….

The War Escalates, Energy Prices Rise, Trump Keeps Flailing - Trump’s first gambit to end the war - surrender - was never sustainable for it turned over the Strait of Hormuz to Iran, leaving them a far stronger power than before. Unable to accept this humiliation and defeat, Trump has restarted his lost war, and is hoping somehow this all gets better for him by doing exactly what he did before that already did not work.

In the meantime oil and gas prices are rising, soldiers are dying, the Pentagon keeps spending money like a drunken sailor, the Middle East is ablaze again, the cost to our economy and the global economy continue to soar, and Iran’s allies, the Houthis of Yemen, are now threatening to open up a new front in the war by closing another vital strait in the region, the Bab al-Mandab, at the bottom of the Red Sea. Yes, as bad as Trump’s failed war keeps failing it could get worse in these closing days of the 2026 election.

Rising Costs, New Tariffs, Slower Job Growth, Fewer Benefits - The renewed war has caused Brent crude to hit $90 a barrel and US gas prices to hit $4 a gallon again. This week the legal authority for Trump’s temporary global tariffs run out and rather than letting them expire and prices to come down Trump is furiously using every trick he has to replace them with new ones. These new tariffs include a new 25% tariff against Brazil and a new 50% tariff against Canada.

So to be clear two months before voting begins here in the US Trump could have allowed his tariffs to expire, lowing prices for Americans. Instead he has chosen to levy new tariffs, keeping prices high. This is something every Democratic candidate should make central to their closing campaign arguments this summer and fall.

The NYT has three additional stories today documenting the harm Trump is doing to every day Americans.

Story one - Trump is purposefully causing your utility bills to rise:

Story two - mass deportation and revocation of TPS is depriving senior citizens the care they need. Trump is purposefully and intentionally causing harm to our seniors, and is causing insurance prices to rise and care be harder to find for tens of millions more in red and blue places alike:

Story three - In Arizona half of all people on SNAP have lost their benefits since the big ugly bill passed last year. Half. Here’s more from The NYT (gift link):

The number of Arizonans getting SNAP benefits has fallen by about half in less than a year, a remarkable drop in nutrition aid that may preview the program’s future nationwide following a landmark law to limit assistance that President Trump championed last year.

Many of the 440,000 Arizonans dropped from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — food stamps — remain eligible for help. But the new law establishes steep penalties on states that make too many mistakes when awarding benefits. To avoid those costs, which are so large that state officials say they could end the program, Arizona increased the paperwork that applicants must file, even as it cut the staff to review it.

The result, aid-seekers and officials both say, has been bureaucratic chaos.

It can take months to reach besieged caseworkers, and offices have gone as far as asking people with panhandling income for verification from strangers dropping cash in their jar. Arizonans losing SNAP say they are skipping meals, quarreling over food, and missing rent payments to restock pantry shelves. For the first time, monthly visits to the state’s food banks — private charities — have exceeded enrollment in SNAP, the government’s main nutrition safety net.

One of the many heartbreaking stories from this terrific NYT reporting

In the past year the number of people receiving SNAP benefits - food that is, food people need to stay alive - has dropped from 42 million to 37.3 million, far exceeding CBO’s estimates for how many people would lose their benefits this year. This Arizona story - heartbreaking, terrifying - suggests that the new barriers Trump and Republicans have put on access to SNAP may to be making people lose their benefits far faster than anyone anticipated, causing even more misery among poorest families in the US.

So two months before voting begins Trump isn’t doing things to make people’s lives better and more affordable, as he promised - he’s makings things more expensive, and our lives worse, on purpose. For in his greed and his gluttony and his “more for me, less for all of you” approach to governing it has become clear he simply doesn’t give a shit about the American people - only himself.

No group of people have ever deserved to be voted out of office as these rancid Republicans champions of what I’ve called a new politics of misery.

Today at 4pm ET the formidable team of Garcia and Blumenthal hold one of their bi-cameral oversight hearings, which you can watch here. Appropriately, it is about his vainglorious Let Them Eat Cakey efforts to remake the nation’s capital in his image:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Tuesday, July 21, 2026 at 4 p.m. ET, U.S. Representative Robert Garcia (D-CA), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Ranking Member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, will convene a bicameral public forum to receive testimony on Donald Trump’s wasteful spending on his vanity projects throughout the nation’s capital, including the White House ballroom, Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Triumphal Arch, and renaming of the Kennedy Center. The forum, “Monumental Waste: How Donald Trump Is Spending Millions Destroying American Landmarks” will shine a light on the blatant corruption surrounding the various projects the President has advanced and call attention to Trump’s efforts to use taxpayer dollars to leave an indelible imprint on our nation’s capital.

Finally, we got the July Strength in Numbers poll today and it continues to show Democrats with strong leads on things that matter:

And yes, my friends, let’s channel the outrage, the disappointment, the frustration, our patriotism, and love of country, for it is time…..

To Do More And Worry Less!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Winning The House and Senate In 2026

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A donation to the Second Wave Fund is split evenly among these seven, and more as other worthy candidates emerge from their primaries. Our total above includes money we’ve raised for directly for each candidate. You can watch interviews with all of seven of these intrepid leaders here. We are off to a great start here everyone!

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Current 2026 Election Analysis

• On The Necessity Of Dems Getting A Clear Mandate From Voters This November - Revisiting My Conversation With Hardy Merriman

• The Importance Of Character And Virtue In The 2026 Elections

• It’s Time To Move On From The “Democrats Suck” Narrative - It’s Wrong, And We Have An Election To Win

• In Defense Of Vetting

A Few More Things To Do

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