Jacob Heilbrunn

In his nationwide address on Wednesday, Donald Trump could not have been clearer about the course of the Iran war. It’s not ending any time soon and there will be no deescalation of military force. Instead, channelling his inner General Curtis LeMay, Trump announced: ‘We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We’re going to bring them back to the stone ages where they belong.’ No, they don’t. It was a jarring reference to an ancient and proud Persian civilisation that has been commandeered by a gang of thugs.

In the pantheon of Trump adversaries, Robert Mueller may rank at the very top. Everything about Mueller – his rectitude, his formality, his blueblood ancestry, his lifelong marriage to his high school sweetheart – was anathema to Trump who has sought, as far as possible, to disestablish the Washington establishment. Yesterday, Trump engaged in a round of gloating over Mueller’s death at age 81, declaring on social media that it couldn’t have come soon enough: “Good, I’m glad he’s dead.” Gee whiz. No crocodile tears from him for the G-Man who had devoted his life to public service. “It is clearly wrong and unchristian behavior,” Republican Rep. Don Bacon wrote. It should, however, come as no surprise.

It’s the best of times for the Democrats in Texas and the worst of times for the Republicans. James Talarico is the Democratic candidate for the Senate while Ken Paxton and John Cornyn are headed for a nasty and expensive three-month runoff that will culminate in a runoff election on 26 May. Cornyn has made no secret of his disdain for Paxton, deeming him a ‘dead weight’. Will it be the Alamo for Texas Republicans, their last stand as the Democrats swarm over their defences to reclaim the Lone Star state and the Senate majority itself? The significance of Talarico’s victory over Jasmine Crockett can hardly be overstated. She has latched onto voter confusion at precincts in Dallas Williamson counties, but her beef seems unlikely to go anywhere.

Following last night’s primaries, Texas Democrats have a clear Senate candidate in James Talarico. Texas Republicans have a civil war. Ken Paxton and John Cornyn are headed for a nasty and expensive three-month runoff that will culminate in an election on May 26. Cornyn has made no secret of his disdain for Paxton, deeming him a “dead weight.” Are Texas Republicans facing an Alamo scenario, a last stand as the Democrats swarm over their defenses to reclaim the Lone Star state and the Senate majority? More than 2.4 million Texans cast ballots in the Democratic primary, the highest number in nearly two decades. The significance of Talarico’s victory over Jasmine Crockett can hardly be overstated.

Here we go again. Switch out Saddam Hussein for the Ayatollah Khamenei and Ahmed Chalabi for Reza Pahlavi and you have a fresh war for regime change in the Middle East, this time with Israel as America’s sidekick. With Operation Epic Fury, the American and Israeli bombing of Iran and push for regime change, the self-proclaimed “President of Peace” runs the risk not only of triggering wider upheaval in the Middle East, but also globally. Is this a new Sarajevo moment? With Trump’s own generals having warned him that attacking Iran could be a debacle, he may have torched his own presidency Unlike George W. Bush in 2003, who worked to bolster domestic and international support for attacking Iraq, Donald Trump has disdained the slightest effort to justify his war publicly.

Donald Trump may have celebrated Team USA for winning the gold at the Olympics in hockey, but he was not in a puckish mood during his State of the Union speech. Instead, Trump stuck to his tried-and-true script of denouncing Democrats as “sick,” mocking concerns about affordability and cooing over Melania as a great new movie star. Far from nobody ever seeing anything like it, Trump delivered what everybody has already seen. Ever the salesman, he was not shy with the superlatives, declaring that America is the “hottest” country in the world – “bigger, better, richer, stronger than ever before.” If there was one thing that was longer than ever, it was Trump’s own address, which set a record length of 108 minutes.

At a rally in Georgia on Thursday night, President Trump declared that he couldn’t wait ‘forever’ for the Supreme Court to rule on the legitimacy of his sweeping tariff policy. Whether or not it was listening to his complaint, forever arrived today as the court handed Trump a thumping defeat. It struck a blow not only for fiscal but also political sanity. The language of the ruling was as lapidary as it was persuasive. ‘President asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope,’ Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the 6-3 opinion. ‘In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it.

As the Potomac ices over for the first time in decades, Washington is in a deep freeze. Democrats are about to send it into an even deeper one. Intent on icing out ICE, they’re threatening to shutter the federal government over a bill funding the Department of Homeland Security and to impeach Kristi Noem. “Donald Trump must fire Kristi Noem immediately,” House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote Tuesday in a post on social media. “Or Democrats will initiate impeachment proceedings against her in the House. We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”Ever since the shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, the Trump administration has been scrambling to recover its footing – and inadvertently helping the Democrats to get their groove back.