Wednesday, April 01, 2026
Trump's Job Approval Continues To Drop
The chart above reflects the results of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll -- done between March 20th and 25th of a nationwide sample of 1,000 adults, with a 3.5 point margin of error.
Voters Are Unhappy With How Trump Is Spending Money
The charts above are from the Navigator Poll -- done between March 12th and 16th of a nationwide sample of 1,000 registered voters, with a 3.1 point margin of error.
Trump Says He Is Winning The War With Iran - He's Not
The following is a post by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich:
Mr. Trump, may I have a word?
Bad enough for you to insist — in the face of all evidence to the contrary — that you won the 2020 election.
But it’s another thing for you to pretend — in the face of mounting deaths and injuries, ballooning expenses, and rising prices — that you won, or are winning, the war with Iran you began on February 28.
“Let me say, we’ve won,” you told a rally in Kentucky on March 11.
“I think we’ve won,” you said on the White House South Lawn on March 20.
“We’ve won this war. The war has been won,” you said in the Oval Office on March 24.
“We are winning so big,” you told a fundraising dinner on March 25.
“We’ve had regime change,” you told reporters three days ago. “The one regime was decimated, destroyed, they’re all dead. The next regime is mostly dead.” Iran has now moved onto its “third regime,” and American negotiators are now speaking to “a whole different group of people” who have “been very reasonable,” you said.
You’re making all this up. In fact, you’re losing your war. And so is America and much of the rest of the world.
After a month, your war has already cost 13 American lives, cost American taxpayers at least $30 billion, cost American consumers at least a dollar more per gallon of gas than they paid a month ago, pushed up food prices and mortgage rates, and pushed down the value of 401(k) retirement plans. It’s mangled supply chains for industries that rely on items such as fertilizer to grow food or helium to make computer chips. It’s also wreaked havoc across the Middle East with at least 1,574 civilians killed in Iran, including 236 children, and at least 50 killed in Iran’s attacks on other Gulf nations.
You assumed Iran would give up its nuclear program. Wrong. After more than a month of bombing by the United States and Israel, you’ve most likely stiffened the regime’s resolve to produce a nuclear weapon.
In this respect, too, America is worse off — more endangered than we were in 2018 before you withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by Barack Obama. In that deal, Iran agreed to restrict its nuclear program — reducing uranium stockpiles by 98 percent and capping enrichment at 3.67 percent, and allowing inspections — in exchange for relief from UN, EU, and U.S. nuclear-related sanctions.
Iran now holds a stockpile of approximately 970 pounds of uranium enriched up to 60 percent purity, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. That’s close to weapons-grade. No one knows where it’s stored.
You thought winning this war would be as easy as abducting Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela and setting up a puppet regime there. Wrong again. The old ayatollah is gone, but the new one and his regime are even more radical and hard line.
You assumed America’s military might would weaken Iran’s military capacity. Wrong. They’ve embraced asymmetric warfare — using cheap drones and missiles and blocking the Strait of Hormuz — rather than take on America’s and Israel’s superior forces directly.
You thought the regime would soon cave. Wrong. It’s been over a month and they’re the ones playing the waiting game. They think they can withstand the mounting political and economic pressures better and longer than you and America can. They may be correct.
Reportedly, you’ve told aides you’re now willing to end the war even if Iran continues to block the Strait of Hormuz. Maybe this is your best option at this point. But it will allow Iran to decide in the future how much oil gets through and for whom, and could cause the economic damage to the U.S. to grow exponentially worse.
Mr. Trump, do you really believe you won this war? Do you really believe America is better off than it was when you began the war?
Maybe the people around you are telling you that you’ve won the war and we’re better off because you punish the bearers of bad news and reward those who tell you what you want to hear. Presumably you’re hearing the same fictionalized good news from Republicans in Congress, from sycophantic leaders abroad, from other assorted lackeys and suck-ups.
Or maybe you think that if you can convince enough people that you won and we’re better off, you will have won and America will be better off. Because for you it’s always about public perceptions of reality rather than reality itself. Everything depends on hype, spin, exaggeration, and outright lies. For you there’s no truth, only belief.
Or maybe you think that if you keep saying you won or are winning, and America has come out on top, your magical thinking will in fact come true.
But this isn’t a game, and you’re not a magician. This is real blood and guts. Real pain. Real deaths and injuries. Real price increases at the gas pump. Real hardships for real people — in America, in the Middle East, and elsewhere.
You can’t pretend, sir. This isn’t reality television. This is for real. And the reality is Americans are worse off now and less secure than we were when you started this.
Tuesday, March 31, 2026
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Most Americans Oppose Putting Trump's Signature On U.S. Currency
The chart above reflects the results of the YouGov Poll -- done on March 30th of a nationwide sample of 18,663 adults (No moe given).
Gov. Andy Beshear Talks About Democrats Winning (And The Iran War)
Politico did an interview with Beshear. Here are some of his thoughts - first on Democrats winning and then on the Iran war.
I am because I think Democratic governors are going to win races that people aren’t expecting because we do what Republicans can’t: We govern well. In Kentucky, we’ve broken every record from job creation to private sector investment. We had the highest wages for new jobs in our history last year at almost $30.00 an hour. So while the American dream is slipping away in some places, not where I live. We’re fighting for it, as are all our Democratic governors.
Number one, I stand up for all my convictions. I fight discrimination in any form. But I spend 80 percent of my time on things that matter to 100 percent of the people of Kentucky and the American people. It’s that idea that when people wake up in the morning, they’re not thinking about the next political race. They’re thinking about their job and whether they can afford what their family needs. That not only helped me win early on, but it’s helped me govern. People know that they might disagree with me on one or two things, but if I spend 80 percent of my time on the things that matter most to them, I don’t move a state or a country to the right or the left, I just move it forward for everyone with no one being left out.
The second thing I try to do is just talk like a normal human being. The Democratic Party at different times has talked atand not to people. It’s even talked down to people, which is wrong. Our words have to have meaning.
But the third thing is the most important, especially in this age of social media. Don’t just talk about the what. Don’t just talk about your policy points. Talk about your why. People want to know you. They want to know what drives you. And the why has to be authentic. For me, my why is my family and my faith. It’s the golden rule that says I love my neighbor as myself and the parable of the good Samaritan that says that everyone is my neighbor.
I think it gets really process-y when we talk about every Democrat needing to have the exact same opinion on every issue across. People try to put you in boxes: Are you the left wing of the party? Or are you the more moderate wing of the party? For me, I’m practical. As governor, you’ve got to be a problem-solver. And so I look at the housing crisis, and I can say things that Democrats say — that we’ve got to invest more money in our affordable housing trust fund. I can say things that Republicans have said in the past — that we have too many regulations that slow it down. Both are true. If your goal is to better people’s lives and get an outcome, that practical problem-solving approach is, I think, where Democrats need to be. Democrats can have different views on social issues.
Democrats stopped talking about their why. It can be your faith. It can be any faith. It can be your values. It can be how you were raised. It could be an experience that you had that changed your life. But people really want to know why are you willing to march into the toxicity of politics right now? They want to know what drives you.
The midterms are shaping up great for Democrats, which is good for elections. But the reason is that Trump is damaging the country in awful ways. And so every day I look at the poll numbers, and I think that’s great, but I look at the damage that’s occurring in each and every one of our communities, and we all wish it wasn’t happening. We wish that he wasn’t attacking the places that he did. We all wish that they would withdraw these ICE agents and actually train them like a real law enforcement agency.
Number one, the American military is exceptional. There is no other like it in the world. And while we can disagree with those that give the orders, we need to be supportive of those troops, and we need to be supportive of the families of the troops we’ve lost. When you’re a president and you come into a state like Donald Trump did, where at that time we had lost one individual, and you’re doing a press conference for any reason, just please say his name. That family deserves that respect. I think the other thing that we have to say is that the Iranian regime has murdered thousands of its own people. They had sponsored terrorism that had murdered thousands of people around the world. And I don’t feel sorry for the regime whatsoever. But if you are going to take a country to war, number one, you have to have a real justification, not one that changes three or four times in the first three or four days.
The second thing you’ve got to do is have an imminent threat. What pushes you from diplomacy to use of force? This president seems to want to start with use of force to ultimately help diplomacy.
The third thing you’ve got to do is actually plan for it. Plan for it in a way that Americans abroad can get home in time. Plan for it in a way where we’re not watching our allies sending planes and hearing our own leaders say, “Oh, we didn’t think about it.” Plan for it in a way that the strait would not be closed and gas prices would not be going up. Plan for it in a way that you know what victory looks like.
And on top of it, if you’re going to take America to war, have enough respect for the citizens of our country and the troops to talk about it to the American people. The American people don’t appear to be for this war at all, and a president should show them enough respect to talk to them about it. That and you’ve got to go to Congress. War is a big enough thing that at least two branches of government have to be communicating about it. So I have a lot of concerns.
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