Jacob Heilbrunn

The US Senate narrowly defeated a measure yesterday intended to crimp, if not terminate, President Trump’s ability to conduct hostilities against Iran. The 50-49 vote on a war powers resolution testified to the mounting hostility toward the military campaign among American voters, two-thirds of whom regard the conflict as a futile endeavour. The result is that Trump’s own popularity rating has plummeted to 32 per cent, edging out Joe Biden’s 33 per cent shortly before he declared that he was exiting the presidential race in July 2024. Presumably, this is one personal record that Trump will not be inclined to tout at his Maga rallies. What is to be done? Two diametrically opposed camps have emerged on the right to advise Trump on Iran.

Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday that the US military will test soldiers over thirty years old for low testosterone. But judging by President Trump’s pallid performance last night during his election integrity speech, that testing should commence with him. Trump appeared to be a spent force, slurring many of his words and rehashing old grievances ad nauseam. His principal complaint: starting in 2019, China engaged in machinations to make it look like 'your president wasn’t so hot'. But last night, Trump himself failed to bring the heat. The American left went into overdrive, fretting that the President would fire an opening salvo to seize control of the midterm elections in November. In fact, he only shot blanks.

The heat is on. The R&B group Kool and the Gang may be co-headlining the historic 'A Capitol Fourth 250th Weekend Celebration', but that isn’t doing anything to cool the flaring political tempers in Washington during a record heatwave. Instead, the two-week-long 'Great American State Fair' on the National Mall to celebrate American emancipation from British tyranny has turned into the birthday party gone wrong. The first sign that things were going awry for the party planners came a few weeks ago with the clumps of algae that began clotting the reflecting pool in central DC, which President Trump had tasked a company called Green Water Solutions to renovate. The company was true to its name. Green Water produced green water.

In January 1934, Franklin D. Roosevelt held a toga-themed birthday party at the White House to mock the accusation that he was an incipient dictator. Donald Trump is doing him one better. The President celebrates his 80th birthday today. As such, his plans for Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) bouts today in an octagon on the South Lawn of the White House are reminiscent of the extravaganzas of the Emperor Commodus, whose rule prompted Gibbon to warn: Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude.

Over the past few months, there has been much prognostication over the flight of young American conservative women from the Republican party. Are young women leaving the 'new right'? Have they become 'disillusioned' – as one news outlet put it – with the politics of the second Trump administration? This weekend, the conservative organisation Turning Point USA hosted its annual women's leadership summit in San Antonio, Texas. There, I saw none of the rumoured divide between being 'Maga' and 'America First' said to be fissuring young supporters of the GOP. The summit represented the consolidation of a counter-counter-culture Far from abandoning Donald Trump, the conference-goers in San Antonio appeared to channel the defiant spirit of the fabled Texas cry, 'Remember the Alamo!

As President Trump travels to China today, his original plans for the visit have been upended. He wanted to arrive as a triumphant conqueror but increasingly resembles a supplicant. Will he strike a 'Two T’s' deal – a grand bargain that trades Taipei for Tehran? Trump has periodically voiced his irritation with China, but at bottom he respects – and even admires – President Xi Jinping as the kind of tough guy that he can do business with on a variety of fronts. The most important one has become Iran, which is threatening to increase its nuclear enrichment programme and successfully defying Trump’s threats to blow it into oblivion. China is Iran’s biggest backer. It previously pushed Tehran into ceasefire talks with Washington.

King Charles and Queen Camilla were at their most emollient in Washington, where they exchanged a flurry of presents with Donald and Melania Trump. The King’s gifts to President Trump included a framed copy of the design plans for the Resolute Desk, which was originally given to President Rutherford B. Hayes by Queen Victoria in 1880. Trump appeared to shelve his hostility toward the United Kingdom for declining to participate in the Iran war, but he quickly made up for his forbearance by pummeling another Nato ally. After speaking with Russian president Vladimir Putin yesterday for 90 minutes, Trump dispensed with his previous bonhomie.