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Does Trump’s Iran War Just Hand Voters a 3.7% Inflation Bill Right Before the Midterms?
The last inflation report before Election Day landed this morning, and it’s ugly. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says consumer prices rose 3.7% over the past year, up from 3.4% in August. Prices jumped 0.6% in a single month. Gasoline did most of the damage, soaring 9.1% in September alone and accounting for more than half of the monthly increase. Gas is now up more than 34% from a year ago. Core inflation, which strips out food and energy, also beat expectations at 2.6%. It’s the first time annual inflation has risen since May, and the Fed, which hiked rates in September, is expected to hike again in December. The Guardian points out that with the single exception of the pandemic, this is the highest inflation rate heading into a midterm since 1990. All of it is driven by Trump’s war with Iran, which choked off supply routes and sent fuel prices through the roof. Trump promised to bring prices down on day one. Instead, working families are paying for a war they never voted for at the gas pump and the grocery store, and the polls show they know exactly who to blame.
Is Trump Lying About Russia and China Arming Iran, or Does He Just Not Know?
Late Monday night on Truth Social, Trump dismissed concerns that Russia and China are helping Iran in its war with the United States. He said both countries would have too much to lose, and that if they were helping, it’d be at a very low level. His exact words were “I don’t believe they are at all.” He added that America would find out very fast if they were. Here’s the problem. The Wall Street Journal has already reported that Chinese entities shipped components used in Iran’s drones and missiles. And US officials have linked satellite imagery obtained from Chinese sources to an Iranian strike that killed three American troops. Beijing says it follows international rules and objects to being tied to the conflict. Russia and China have kept close ties with Tehran for decades and both deny providing arms since the war began in late February. So American soldiers are coming home in flag-draped coffins, and the commander in chief is telling us not to believe his own intelligence. Either he’s lying to protect his friendships with Putin and Xi, or he doesn’t know what his own government knows. Neither one is acceptable in a president who’s running a war.
Greenland Official Shoots Down Trump’s “Massive” Oil Fantasy While Americans Face Fuel Rationing
Tuesday night, Trump posted on Truth Social that massive oil, gas, and mineral exploration is about to begin in what he called our new and beautiful Greenland. He claimed experts say the island holds more easily available oil than almost anywhere on earth, and that any future attack on America would have to come across Greenland. Wednesday morning, Greenland’s deputy mining minister Jørgen Hammeken-Holm told CNN that while some US companies are active there, “we are very far away from massive exploration.” The small projects underway could take years to become operational. About 80% of the island sits under ice, in places a mile thick, with almost no infrastructure. Here’s why Trump’s grasping at this. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at its lowest level since October of 1982. Energy executives are warning of rationing if supply routes aren’t reopened soon. And earlier this month Trump lifted sanctions on Russia so we could import Russian diesel. Greenland isn’t ours. It’s a Danish territory with its own people and its own government. A president who drained the emergency reserve, started a war, and then reached for a colonial fairytale isn’t solving the fuel crisis. He’s hiding from it.
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Why Is a MAGA-Linked Super PAC Spending $400,000 to Elect a Socialist in Ohio?
A brand new super PAC called Enough Promises Ohio has paid an outfit called Seven Farms nearly $397,000 this year for mailers backing Greg Levy, an independent candidate from the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and attacking Democrat Sherrod Brown. The mailers say Join the Revolution and Send a Worker to the Senate, and they push Levy’s calls for a $30 minimum wage and a free Palestine. Follow the money and FEC filings lead to Big Dog Strategies, a Republican consulting firm with ties to MAGA Inc., Trump’s own super PAC. Levy’s entire campaign has raised about $80,000 and takes no PAC money at all. His campaign says it has nothing to do with the mailers, calls them a crude impersonation, and is weighing legal action. In Levy’s words, “we condemn this attempted deception of voters.” The motive is obvious. Brown leads Republican Jon Husted by about three points in the polling average, and one right-leaning poll found Husted at 44, Brown at 43, and Levy at three. After years of screaming socialism to scare voters away from Democrats, Republicans are now secretly selling a socialist. That’s Citizens United in action. Unlimited money, hidden donors, and a Senate seat decided by deception instead of debate.
Will Hegseth’s Live-Streamed Firing Squad Blow Up in Trump’s Face Before November?
Five days ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told podcaster Jack Posobiec, the man who pushed the Pizzagate hoax, that Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 in 2009, will be executed by firing squad on December 3rd at Fort Hood. And he wants the public to watch. “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it,” Hegseth said. Critics have called it a snuff film. Speaker Mike Johnson warned the video could become a recruiting tool for terrorists. Senator Thom Tillis said it could traumatize Americans. New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie called it a lynching. Constitutional law professor Beau Baumann of the University of Utah told Raw Story the whole thing reeks of desperation. He compared it to what Michel Foucault called the spectacle of the scaffold, the public torture authoritarian states fall back on when their grip on power is slipping. Baumann says you stage a spectacle like this when you’ve got momentum, and Trump and Hegseth are way past that point. Public executions are what dying regimes do when they’ve lost the argument. America gave them up for a reason, and strongman cosplay in front of the cameras won’t bring back a single vote
Is Punishing the Poor the Only Card Trump Has Left to Play?
The Guardian’s Eduardo Porter sees a manic quality in Trump’s final dash before the midterms. The one thing his administration actually got done, and sent Vice President JD Vance out to brag about, was throwing more than 750,000 people off the Affordable Care Act marketplaces on the grounds that they don’t deserve federal subsidies. The White House says that saves about $2.2 billion a year. Compare that to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, expected to add $4.1 trillion to the deficit over a decade, mostly through tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. The deficit is heading toward $2 trillion this year, about 18% higher than Biden’s last year. Meanwhile Trump is mailing $500 checks to nearly a million ACA enrollees and promising every adult $5,000 if Republicans keep Congress. Remember, Republicans let the ACA subsidies expire, and premiums for those same families went up by thousands of dollars. For many, that $500 won’t cover one month of the increase. Porter writes that Trump appears to believe “hitting poor people might work for him.” Kicking 750,000 people off their health insurance to save chump change while handing trillions to billionaires isn’t fiscal policy. It’s cruelty with a bribe attached, and the bribe is the confession.
And that’s the way it is, Today Wednesday, October 14, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
