The midterms are obviously important. For most Americans, however, the stakes aren’t as high as much of the coverage will make it sound. We’ll report on the midterms here at The Pinpoint Press, but only on the real news likely to make a difference. Let’s start with five things worth paying attention to, now that Election Day is less than six months away:

Democrats will probably gain power, but their odds are slipping. President Trump’s approval rating has dropped below 40%, the best possible development for Democrats. The Iran war could still last for months, with gasoline prices well above $4 per gallon as voters prepare to go to the polls in the fall. You couldn’t script a better scenario for the opposing party to eject the incumbents.

The one thing working against Democrats, for now, is the redistricting arms race that seems like it might net Republicans a few seats in the House of Representative that they wouldn’t otherwise win. A lot could still happen, and that redistricting edge may not be decisive. But Democratic odds have declined after a couple recent court decisions went against them.

Prediction site Kalshi puts the odds of Democrats winning the House at around 74%, down from a high of 86% in early April. The Senate is closer, with Republicans slightly favored to maintain control, according to Kalshi.

There will be tons of chatter in coming months about whether Democrats will mount a “blue wave” that sweeps them into power in both houses with higher than usual margins for a midterm. It’s a fun parlor game for political geeks, especially those hoping Trump and his fellow Republicans take a beating. But the margins won’t matter all that much for most ordinary Americans.

If Democrats win the House, that’s all they’ll need to block Republican legislation through 2028, such as additional tax cuts or more funding for migrant roundups. Republicans already anticipate that happening.

If Dems win the Senate, it will be with a very small majority, possibly just a one-vote margin. They’d gain control over Trump Cabinet appointments, which would basically mean no more jackass picks such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or FBI Director Kash Patel. Trump has already fired a couple of Cabinet officials, and he might axe a few more this year, so he can be sure of getting replacements through a friendly Senate in 2026.

With control of either House, Democrats are likely to launch right into oversight hearings on just about every Trump controversy. Jeffrey Epstein will never really die. Dems will probe Trump’s ballooning fortune as a president on the take. They’ll rake over agencies with the shiftiest Cabinet secretaries, take testimony on thuggish behavior by Trump’s immigration goons, and highlight abuses of prosecutorial power at the Justice Dept. A third impeachment proceeding against Trump is possible, though conviction in the Senate probably isn’t. Also watch for impeachment proceedings against the shadiest Cabinet appointees.

What Democrats won’t be able to do is pass partisan legislation of their own, since Trump would veto it. So while Democrats might get some satisfaction from running up the score in a blue wave and keeping Trump’s corruption in the headlines, they won’t have much luck enacting their own priorities until 2029, at the earliest.

If you do care about the horse-race aspects of the midterms, two good sources for following the action are the Cook Political Report and the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. There are many others.

There’s no “affordability” action on the horizon. Not in Washington, DC, anyway. The only legislation Republicans might pass before the midterms are some funding bills and possibly a modest tax cut, which most people won’t notice. There’s nothing serious in the works to address the high cost of housing, health care, energy or food. Trump could actually make affordability worse. He’s still planning to roll out new tariffs in coming months, which would raise the cost of imports, all the way to you and me.

If Democrats win control of both houses, they might try to pass health care subsidies or other affordability measures next year, as a messaging exercise meant to tell voters what they stand for. Don’t get too excited. Dems won’t have the votes to override a Trump veto and they might not get organized enough to figure out what their message is, anyway.

The stock market outlook is pretty good, politically. The average gain in the S&P 500 index is 9% in the second year of a presidential term. The S&P is already up 7.4% for the year. If stocks cooled off for the next few months, that would be consistent with midterm election year trends.

Morgan Stanley points out that political uncertainty tends to subdue risk-on trading in the months before a midterm election. But by the beginning of October, investors start to price in the likely outcome and look past the election, with stocks rising. Once the election is over, stocks rip, with an average gain of 22% in the 12 months following a midterm election.

This year could be different. The artificial intelligence boom has been generating outsized stock gains since the end of 2023. A big part of that has been torrid earnings growth, which is now double the historical average. AI fervor could overpower election effects, which tend to be temporary, anyway. It could also go the other way if there’s some big meltdown that suggests the AI trade has gotten ahead of itself.

If Democrats do win one or both Congressional houses, divided government will generate few big changes in government policy, which is generally good for stocks. While the energy crisis caused by Trump’s war with Iran has been a disaster, markets like Trump’s deregulatory bent, along with the lower tax rates he signed into law last year. Those policies will continue to goose stocks.

Trump will continue to threaten election interference. Trump thinks it’s funny to troll democracy. He “jokes” about being a king, says he may or may not leave when his term expires in 2029, and demands voting restrictions he thinks will help Republicans in November. The gerrymandering arms race that’s underway this year got started because Trump told allies in Texas to rig congressional districts in a way that would help Republicans gain five House seats. It’s safe to assume that Trump would steal the election, if he could.

The good news is, that will be hard. Nathaniel Rakich of Votebeat handicapped the risks of Trump rigging the midterms in a recent interview with the Silver Bulletin newsletter. Many safeguards are built into the system. States administer elections and the president can’t cancel them or tell states how to run them, though Trump may try. It’s also not clear that all the gerrymandering will help Republicans. Trump’s efforts to limit and discourage mail-in voting might also not help his cause.

More worrisome is the possibility Trump will try to send immigration agents or other federales to areas near certain polling places, to intimidate voters or election workers. Friendly red-state governors such as Greg Abbott of Texas could call out National Guard troops for the same purpose. Creating chaos in or near areas where there are tight elections might be a pretext for snatching or invalidating ballots. If there is a blue wave, a small number of irregularities may not matter. But if Democrats underperform—always possible!—and there's a tight race for control of the House, Trump meddling in a few close races could become momentous.

Trump is heading toward his lame-duck phase. Trump litigates everything, and orders his minions to litigate everything. So there will be lawsuits over the midterm election results. The most likely outcome is that courts hold the line, as they did in 2020, the first time Trump tried to overturn an election. You’ll know there’s a problem if I start to post an exploding head emoji at the top of every dispatch I send. 🤯

Normal presidents curtail their domestic policy ambitions and focus more on foreign affairs once they hit lame-duck status. Trump seems less likely to go quietly. He still seems determined to enact more tariffs, and might feel unrestrained once he doesn’t have to worry about angry voters and all their kvetching about affordability. He’s ordered military action in seven nations so far during his second term, and it’s not clear his misadventures in the Hormuz Strait have taught him restraint. Plus, Trump thrives on conflict, whether he has laws to sign or not.

Divided government might generate gridlock, but it won’t provide any respite from the madness.

Enjoy a cartoon.

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Iran flexes. The media breathlessly follows the deadlines President Trump sets for starting or ending Iran ceasefires, but Iran is now calling the shots, or at least some of them. Trump extended his own ceasefire deadline on April 21 after the Iranians refused to show up for negotiations that were supposed to take place in Pakistan. Vice President JD Vance was supposed to lead those talks, but his trip kept getting delayed, until Trump said on social media that he was extending the ceasefire deadline indefinitely.

Trump and his aides say a power struggle is underway in Iran between hardline militants and civilian parliamentarians. Maybe. But this dodging and weaving could last for weeks or months while petroleum remains bottled up in the Persian Gulf.

[See the economic costs of the Iran war, so far]

Iran knows Trump’s popularity is sinking at home, and many in the regime feel they can wait Trump out: The longer they can keep oil and gasoline prices high, the worse it will get for their adversary. Trump threatens to renew the bombing of Iran, but that could push oil and gas prices even higher, so Iran’s answer to that is, go ahead, make my day. The US blockade does seem to be blocking some Iranian oil exports, as intended, but that doesn’t get more oil flowing through the strait.

As I wrote earlier this week, it took 20 months for President Obama’s team to negotiate the 2015 deal with Iran that put limits on its nuclear weapons program. Trump obviously thinks the threat of bombing will produce a much faster result. But Iran wasn’t throttling Persian Gulf oil shipments in 2015. It is now.

There are three things to know about the Iran war at this point:

1. Every Trump deadline is arbitrary and subject to change.

2. Iran’s ability to disrupt Persian Gulf shipping provides powerful negotiating leverage that it will use ruthlessly.

3. The closer the midterms get, the less likely it is Trump will resume bombing.

[See why it could take months for the Iran war to end]

Warsh delayed. Kevin Warsh, President Trump’s nominee to be the next Federal Reserve chair, passed his Senate confirmation hearing on April 21. Democrats tried to goad Warsh into bashing Trump, a trap he dodged. When asked if he would be a Trump “sock puppet,” Warsh said “absolutely not.” That’s the obvious (and right) answer, and the Senate will likely confirm Warsh.

But probably not before Powell’s term expires on May 15. “We do not expect Warsh to be confirmed by May 15th and it’s possible a confirmation does not take place for months,” Henrietta Treyz of Veda Partners advised clients in an April 20 update.

Here’s what’s going on. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina says he won’t vote for Warsh until the Trump Justice Dept. formally ends a bogus criminal investigation into Powell, supposedly for cost overruns at a big Fed renovation project. That is Trump’s effort to punish Powell for not cutting interest rates enough. Other Republican senators support Tillis, as a way of protecting the independence of the Fed and preventing Trump from politicizing monetary policy, which could be an economic disaster.

Trump could end the DOJ witch hunt of Powell any time he wants. But being Trump, he needs some kind of face-saving pretext to stop an investigation that’s going nowhere. There are GOP machinations in the works to establish some nominal form of Congressional oversight to supplant the DOJ probe and give Trump a “win.” But that could take a while.

Powell would remain de facto Fed chair until the Senate confirms Warsh. Markets are comfortable with Powell and won’t complain if stays in the job a while longer. As for rate cuts, investors think the odds of the Fed lowering rates at all this year are well below 50%. Trump’s Iran war has caused a burst of inflation that will likely persist for most of the year. The Fed almost never lowers rates when inflation is rising, and even if Warsh wanted to, most of the other 11 voting members at the Fed wouldn’t go along with him.

To reiterate: Trump has established two barriers to getting what he wants at the Fed. His contrived criminal campaign against Powell will delay the installation of the man Trump wants to replace him. And Trump’s own war has precipitated inflationary conditions that will prevent the Fed from lowering rates.

I discussed the outlook for Warsh’s nomination CNN on April 21. Here’s the clip:

The real outlook for gas prices. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on April 19 that energy disruptions caused by the Iran war could keep gas prices above $3 per gallon until next year. He’s probably right, and he might even be understating the case. The Energy Information Administration, considered reliable, forecasts an average gasoline price of $3.70 per gallon for all of 2026, and $3.46 per gallon for 2027. That’s consistent with other forecasts.

Trump disagrees. A day after Wright spoke, Trump said his forecast was “totally wrong.” But hold on: They could both end up being right. Trump said gas prices will sink below $3 “as soon as this ends.” So if the Iran war isn’t fully resolved until 2027 (see above), and prices then drop back below $3, it’s a win-win!

Except Wright is now in the uncomfortable position of being publicly contradicted by his boss. This tends to happen to Trump appointees who try to protect their own credibility by refusing to lie for Trump. Do it enough, and Trump dumps you.

[See all of Trump’s losing causes]

Trump sinks. Trump’s approval rating has now fallen below 40% in several polls, at or near a record low for his two presidential terms. Perhaps more alarming for Trump is his standing on two issues that got him elected in 2024. His net approval rating on the economy has plunged from +12 when he took office to -20, according to YouGov. On inflation, his net approval has totally crashed, from +6 when he took office to -35.

This could get worse for Trump. Morgan Stanley estimates that an annualized 15% increase in gasoline prices would wipe out the average increase in tax refunds most workers are likely to get thanks to the tax cut law Trump signed last year. The average refund is expected to be about $350 bigger this year. But if pump prices average $3.70 this year, as the EIA forecasts, that would be 19% higher than the average 2025 price of $3.10. The extra $350 will go right into the gas tank, and then some.

Before he started the Iran war on February 28, Trump’s plan was to tout those tax cuts as the centerpiece of his “affordability” plan. Now he’s made affordability considerably worse. That’s why he wants people to think gas prices will fall quickly and rapidly. Once again: The Iranians know what a mess Trump has put himself in, and are in no mood to offer mercy.

Cabinet follies. I predicted in March that Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer was a goner, based on a series of scandals too tawdry even for Trump. She resigned on April 20. So who’s next? I’ve been lobbying for Trump to fire Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose macho overcompensating fails to mask epic incompetence evident in disastrous planning for the Iran war. But Trump doesn’t seem to get the picture, yet.

So Kash Patel, the FBI director, seems like a fun target to focus on. The Atlantic reported on April 17 that problems with Patel include “conspicuous inebriation” and “unexplained absences.” His staff sometimes has trouble waking him up after benders, and routinely reworks his schedule to make up for no-shows, according to the magazine. That comes on top of allegations that Patel uses a government jet for personal travel for himself and his girlfriend. Many critics said Patel wasn’t up to one of the most important jobs in government, which is pretty much self-evident.

Trump wants to clean house before the November midterms, so he doesn’t have to risk getting Cabinet nominees past a Democratic Congress, if Republicans lose the Senate. So Patel might be a marked man. He denied the Atlantic allegations and filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit. But don’t bank much on that. Acclaimed news operations such as the Atlantic have good lawyers and know how to vet stories. Plus, if the Patel lawsuit gets anywhere, it would involve a discovery phase that could reveal even more embarrassing material. Patel’s lawsuit is for show, just like Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal for publishing truthful material about Trump’s links to Jeffrey Epstein. A federal judge threw that out on April 13.

Tariff refund. The Trump administration has set up a system to refund some $166 billion in tariffs improperly paid by American importers. This follows the February Supreme Court decision shooting down the “emergency” tariffs Trump had imposed on imports from dozens of countries.

The details of the refund mechanism aren’t important to ordinary people. What is important is that Trump is complying with the court’s order. After the February 20 ruling, some analysts thought Trump might drag his feet on refunds, forcing more litigation. The relatively prompt refund process suggests Trump and his minions don’t have the stomach to push the Supreme Court any further. Good!

There’s one funny sidelight: On April 21, Trump said it would be “brilliant” for companies that are owed tariffs to decline to collect them. “I’ll remember them,” Trump said, as if he has some special favors in mind for firms that leave money on the table.

In the real world, CEOs of public companies are required to do whatever is in their shareholders’ interest, and reclaiming money illegally collected by the federal government would seem like an obvious call. But maybe some private CEOs don’t mind paying an illegal tax. Trump owes a business, and he always pays some extra tax, for the good of the country, right? Right? 🙄

Iran war post-mortem. The Iran war ceasefire President Trump declared on April 7 is awfully shaky, given that there’s not much Iran and the United States agree on in terms of a peace deal. But it’s also hard to see why either side would want to start shooting again.

Trump obviously panicked at the prospect of oil prices hovering above $100 per barrel and gasoline prices heading toward $5 per gallon. He can’t risk a return to that. Iran is battered, but it has newfound control over the Strait of Hormuz and a huge new revenue stream if it remains able to enact “tolls” on tankers of up to $2 million per ship. That could net $60 billion per year, or more.

Nobody has “won” this war. For now, each side lost something. Three takeaways:

Read more

But the two-week ceasefire Trump says the Iranian regime has agreed to is fraught with trouble. For starters, there’s no actual agreement. Each side has a list of demands they’ll begin negotiating over on April 11. Iran does not think it lost, and may actually think it won by surviving an intense US-Israeli bombing campaign. The theocratic government is not likely to make steep concessions, and could end up a more malign influence in the future than it was before Trump started the war on February 28.

Here’s a short list of what’s wrong with the ceasefire:

1. Iran has far more control over the Strait of Hormuz now than it did before the war. Tankers passed freely through the strait before the war. Iran now decides which tankers pass, while charging a “toll” of up to $2 million per ship, which it says it will split with Oman, on the southern side of the strait. If this arrangement stands, Iran will suddenly have an alarming degree of control over shipments of oil, natural gas, and many vital industrial products exported by nations such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE—now Iran’s hostile wartime enemies.

“A failure to demonstrate the will and ability to deny Iran the ability to disrupt traffic in the Strait of Hormuz will make it much harder to deter Iran from future disruptions,” the Institute for the Study of War contends. “Stopping the war in current conditions would thus represent a major strategic challenge that the United States or Israel would need to contend with in future rounds of conflict with a regime that will continue to be a committed adversary.”

Read more

President Trump has a different timeline, borne of the dreadfully poor preparations he and his civilian advisers—including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—made for an ugly war. From the beginning of the war he launched on February 28, Trump has set laughably unrealistic goals for what he expects military action against Iran to accomplish. Trump also badly misjudged the risks and blew off the many experts who predicted for decades that Iran, if attacked, would shut the Strait of Hormuz, causing a global energy shock. That’s exactly what it did.

With oil prices now well over $100 per barrel and his approval rating sinking, Trump is suddenly in a hurry to end the war. So we get desperate threats, such as “a whole civilization will die tonight,” his April 7 social-media post warning of … well, who knows what, if Iran doesn’t fully open the Strait of Hormuz by 8 pm, Washington DC time on that day.

[See the economic costs of the Iran war, in 11 charts]

Why April 7? Why 8 pm? No reason, except Trump’s impatience. But it probably won’t actually be April 7. This deadline will most likely come and go like a bunch of others, with no decisive action at all, and more deadlines to follow. The whole Iran war, in fact, is becoming a farcical effort by an increasingly shrill Trump to threaten his way out of one of the worst jams he ever put himself in.

Let’s review Trump’s Strait of Hormuz ultimatums, so far. The first one came on March 21, when Trump gave Iran 48 hours to reopen the strait or else US forces would “obliterate” the country’s power plants. As the March 23 deadline drew near, Trump delayed for another five days, saying there were “productive talks” with Iran. That was probably a lie. There’s no evidence there have been any meaningful negotiations with Iran.

On March 26, Trump delayed his ultimatum again, this time until April 6. Then on April 5, Trump moved his deadline to April 7. Trump’s threats, meanwhile, are becoming increasingly hysterical, as if Iran will fold once Trump just screams loud enough on social media.

[Why Trump should fire Hegseth]

Trump’s threats and ultimatums are never going to be the thing that reopens the Strait of Hormuz. In fact, they’re giving Iran leverage. Iran is betting that the longer it controls the strait, and the higher oil prices go, the more desperate Trump will get, and the more likely he will be to make a cease-fire deal they can live with. Trump’s manic demands play right into the enemy’s strategy.

Here’s how a more competent president would have approached this war: Start by meshing public statements with the military timeline. If it’s going to take the military two or three months—or even six—to root out all the threats to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, then set that as a public expectation.

Next: Understand the enemy better. As numerous experts continually remind us, the Iranian regime cares about one thing above everything else: its own survival. They will always call Trump’s bluff when the alternative is agreeing to terms that could bring about their own demise.

Finally: STFU. Trump’s panicky bleats are a demonstration of weakness, not strength. And every time Trump sets a deadline that Iran fails to meet, his credibility drops by a notch, making the next deadline even sillier.

[See what it will really take to reopen the Strait of Hormuz]

Trump, of course, is an incurable loudmouth who actually thinks he’s a great dealmaker. So the media has to treat every Trump deadline like it’s the story of the century, with something decisive really about to happen, over and over and over. Traders fixate on Trump’s shifting deadlines as if every one of them is a huge market-moving event. All of it contributes to a false construct in which the outcome of the war will be determined by whether Iran caves to Trump at a moment of Trump’s choosing.

The military timeline is the one that really matters. We don’t know exactly what it is, except that it’s longer than Trump’s. At some point, the two timelines might merge. But that will probably be many more unmet Trump deadlines into the future.

Not dead yet. President Trump has said repeatedly that Iran is essentially defeated. But Iran is not behaving that way. During the last few days, it shot down an F-15 Air Force fighter jet and a Navy A-10 Warthog attack plane. The A-10 pilot and one of the two F-15 pilots are safe. The Pentagon hasn’t said anything about the other F-15 pilot, which is worrisome. The plane went down over Iran, so presumably the pilot is on the ground there.

Pentagon officials told members of Congress that two rescue helicopters involved in the F-15 pilot rescue took fire and had to retreat. That’s ominous. If the Iranians capture the pilot, everybody will know right away because they’ll try to exploit it for propaganda value. The pilot could also be dead, injured or hiding. Pilot rescues in hostile terrain can be dangerous and dramatic. Fingers crossed.

Those two types of jets are older, non-stealthy models, and the A-10 is particularly slow and vulnerable. They must have been flying over areas where the US military thought the air-defense threat was minimal. That means the Iranians mostly likely got off a couple of lucky shots with missile launchers that were hidden and mobile, rolling them out to shoot, then rushing them back into hiding.

[The Weekly WTF: God mulls US request for “overwhelming violence”]

There could be a lot more of this as American pilots fly lower to root out weapons one by one, especially along the coast, as part of the effort to clear threats to ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

Read more

One way out is to fire Pete Hegseth, the preening Defense Secretary who is the most vocal champion of the war among Trump’s sycophantic appointees.

As Defense Secretary, Hegseth is second in the military chain of command. Other than Trump, he’s the person most responsible for any decision about going to war and how to prosecute a war once it’s underway.

As Trump threatened to attack Iran and ordered the buildup of US forces in the Persian Gulf region in January and February, Hegseth had to be the main cheerleader either goading Trump on or telling him what he wanted to hear. The Iran war belongs to Hegseth as much as it belongs to Trump.

[The Weekly WTF: Hegseth asks God for “overwhelming violence”]

There’s a lot of reporting on the warnings raised in the runup to the war by Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Caine reportedly warned Trump that a war could bring US casualties and become an open-ended political mess. He also downplayed the ease of overthrowing the Iranian regime. And the Pentagon’s war planners have known for decades that Iran’s ability to close the Strait of Hormuz to oil shipments is a dangerous asymmetric capability, no matter how undermatched Iran might be militarily. By all available evidence, Caine—who is not in the chain of command—did his job, which is to make sure the president understood the pros and cons of any military operation.

The two civilians who give military orders—Trump and Hegseth—disregarded the threats their military advisors pointed out. And now, many of those threats have materialized just as predicted, as Iran wreaks havoc with world energy supplies and the United States is short on solutions.

By military standards, the Iran war isn’t going badly. US and Israeli forces are steadily and seriously degrading Iran’s military capabilities and curtailing its ability to cause trouble throughout the Middle East.

By the standards Trump set, however, the war is going terribly. That falls on Hegseth, a civilian appointee whose job is to communicate his department’s activities to the public and to Congress in a way that engenders widespread support. Grade: F.

When Trump announced the start of the war on February 28, he basically said the theocratic Iranian regime would be gone in short order. Five weeks later, it’s still there, with no sign of losing power.

[Trump pranks financial markets, again]

A few days later, on March 3, Trump said “we expect a very swift conclusion.” He didn’t define “swift,” but markets interpreted that as a few weeks, which is why the price of oil and other commodities rose only modestly at first.

Trump’s biggest failing, so far, has been total obliviousness to Iran’s domination of the Strait of Hormuz. That has shut in about 20% of the world’s oil supply. Trump did absolutely nothing to prepare anybody for this, and it’s blazingly apparent now that he didn’t know what he was doing. Oil prices have jumped from $80 per barrel during the first few days of the war to nearly $110, as Trump’s stupidity sinks in and traders realize Trump’s promises of a short war were magical thinking.

Trump should blame himself for this, but as we know, Trump never accepts blame for anything or admits a mistake.

That leaves Hegseth. The “secretary or war,” as the overcompensating Hegseth fancies himself, was right there with Trump, downplaying the threat assessments and imagining the oil would somehow keep flowing. Firing him would give Trump the opportunity to say it was his defense secretary who made these terrible miscalculations. With Hegseth gone, Trump could install somebody he characterizes as less crazy, and make a cease-fire deal with Iran, saying that’s what he wanted all along. Only the bellicose Hegseth temporarily steered him in the wrong direction.

[Trump’s 6 craziest Iran war statements]

The uniformed military would certainly cheer (silently). Hegseth is a tyrant who has been firing accomplished admirals and generals for no stated reason, probably for the unstated reason that he wants principled professionals out of the way so he can run the Pentagon like a squad of brownshirts.

Hegseth is already becoming the Robert McNamara of the Iran war, the guy who sold an easy war that turned out to be nothing of the sort. And he’s doing it with about half of McNamara’s intelligence. If the Iran war doesn’t become a debacle, something else will, because Hegseth is a child playing with a flamethrower.

Trump recently fired two Cabinet member, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem. Politico reports that he may soon fire others, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Hegseth, alas, is not known to be on the list of Trump’s endangered aides.

Trump’s own hubris may prevent him from seeing the risk Hegseth poses to his legacy and political standing. After all, they are Brothers in Buffoonery. But Hegseth has already brought Trump down, or at least enabled Trump to bring himself down. It’s going to get worse.