Now What?

Now we have experienced TACO Tuesday. As usual, the stock market went wild (the Dow was up 1,325 yesterday). Donald Trump loves that, so what is his next move? Iran mentioned a 10-point plan, but didn't release an official plan with 10 items numbered from 1 to 10. What they did release came by way of the Pakistani government. Still, Trump said that is a workable basis on which to negotiate, even though it lists everything Iran wants and nothing the U.S. wants. It is not exactly a complete surrender, so if Jared Kushner puts on his negotiating hat and can tear himself away from the Saudis' money for a day or two, he might be able to weaken a couple of the most odious points. Trump's incredible lack of understanding of diplomacy came through by his not having his own 10-point plan ready as a counteroffer. Starting with Iran's plan and working from there is a sign of not understanding how to negotiate. People have written entire books on the art of the deal. He ought to go find and read one.

Since there does not appear to be an official list of the points, here is what we gleaned from The Guardian, The National, and Al Jazeera:

1. Continued Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz
2. U.S. acceptance of Iran's uranium enrichment program
3. The U.S. paying reparations for the damage it caused to Iran in the war
4. The release of frozen Iranian assets
5. U.S. military withdrawal from the entire Middle East
6. An end to attacks on Iran and its allies
7. The lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions on Iran
8. An end to U.N. resolutions against Iran
9. An end to resolutions against Iran by the International Atomic Energy Agency
10. A U.N. security council resolution making any deal binding

The various sources are not entirely consistent, but the list above seems to cover most of the likely possibilities. The offiicial list may come today, but it is unlikely to be very different from this. Suppose Kushner goes and finds some book on the art of the deal, speed-reads it, memorizes the key ingredients, and with his new negotiation skills, gets Iran to drop nine of the 10 points and keeps only one of Kushner's choosing. Your homework assignment (remember, we became professors so we can give out homework assignments) is to please explain how this would differ from a surrender by the U.S. In your own words, explain how the U.S. is better in any way than it was before spending tens of billions of dollars and ending the lives of 13 brave American soldiers on Operation Epstein Fury.

The first five are going to be tough to sugarcoat. If Trump accepts any of them, the blowback domestically will be enormous. He will have given up all America's leverage in the Middle East in return for nothing. In its place, he will have achieved a far more powerful Iran. All Iran lost was its air force and navy, neither of which was any good or of any importance, really.

It took Barack Obama a couple of years to negotiate a deal with Iran that resulted in it shipping 97% of its enriched uranium out of the country. Is Trump going to get a better deal in 2 weeks, now that Iran absorbed everything the U.S. could throw at it (except nuclear weapons) and the regime is stronger than ever? We shall see, but don't hold your breath.

The deal could really shake up geopolitics, and not in a good way. European countries would see the U.S. as weak and unreliable and would greatly accelerate their move toward their own defense. That would include building their own weapons industries as fast as possible, to end their dependence on Lockheed Martin, RTX (Raytheon) and Northrup Grumman. Saudi Arabia would fear Iran even more than it does now, now that it knows the combined (and enormous) military might of the U.S. and Israel was unable to take down Iran. It would have to accept much more Iranian dominance in the region than it would like. China would see the U.S. as militarily not as strong as it feared since it was unable to beat a medium-sized power it really cared about beating. Xi Jinping might conclude that taking Taiwan would not provoke much of a response from the U.S. and even if it did, the U.S. would give up as soon as gas hit $4/gal. Russia would double down on taking all of Ukraine knowing the U.S. is running out of munitions, and even if Congress appropriates an extra $200 billion for the DoD and has an accelerated bidding process, it could take defense contractors more than a year to actually produce more munitions.

Four weeks ago, Trump talked about an "unconditional surrender." We may yet end up with one, his only mistake was picking the wrong country that surrendered.

There is another point that is not on Iran's golden wish list, but could arise during negotiations: the end of the petrodollar system. Jonathan V. Last has a good (partially paywalled) piece on this. Currently, nearly all oil transactions in the world are in U.S. dollars. Suppose Iran demands that the tolls it will impose on the Strait of Hormuz be paid in yuan. This will reduce the role of the dollar in world trade and boost the role of the yuan. Countries will sell their T-bills and buy C-bills (which China will have to grudgingly create, despite its dislike for other countries stockpiling yuan). The U.S. currently gets a free ride in a lot of ways on account of the petrodollars. Whenever the budget is not balanced (which is always since Bill Clinton), the Fed can just magically create more dollars. But if world trade moved to yuan, the U.S. couldn't do that without devaluing the dollar against the yuan, which would stoke massive inflation, make Social Security unsustainable, and a lot of other bad things. Nothing good for the U.S. can come from replacing the dollar with the yuan as the world's reserve currency.

Then there is this. If you thought Trump would put the country's interest above his own for a minute, you greatly underestimated his creativity. Now Trump is in favor of tolls in the Strait of Hormuz, which would raise the price of energy in the U.S. Why the change? He thought of the idea of forming a joint venture with Iran to charge and manage the tolls. If the joint company charged a toll of $1/barrel, it would make about $20 million per day (or 137 million yuan). That comes out to $7.3 billion (or 50 billion yuan) per year. Suppose Trump got one-third of the take (he is a generous man, so he might well allow Iran to own two-thirds of the stock, to teach them about capitalism), then he would make $2.2 billion per year while Americans would struggle to buy gas. Seems par for the course, no? Does this deal count as an emolument? Of course not. What's an emolument, anyway?

If you are one of those people who likes to look at the bright side of everything, no matter how dark it is, here is the bright side of this: It will take a while for gas prices to come down and if Iran, in some joint company—call it Tiran—imposes tolls on tankers going forward, energy prices are going to rise, permanently. Higher energy prices will aid the move away from fossil fuels faster than anything in the Inflation Reduction Act, which Trump has largely gutted. Higher energy prices will help mitigate climate change as people are forced to use less fossil fuel due to the price. Europe and Asia will start pushing electric vehicles as hard as they can. Nuclear power may become economically competitive. The solar and wind power industries will grow. Greece, southern France, and southern Italy have plenty of sun. In the U.S., the total cost of car ownership may increasingly favor electric cars and consumers will take notice. Of course, those cars will come from China because Trump's policies have decimated the domestic electric car industry. But maybe South Korea and Japan will be able to rev up fast enough to take market share away from China. (V)

More about the Wisconsin Elections

The big news out of Wisconsin yesterday was the landslide victory of Wisconsin-Supreme-Court-Justice-elect Chris Taylor. But there was some other news we didn't get to on account of the temporary cease fire (in Iran, not in Wisconsin). There were two other significant results in the Badger State. Where else, outside of Wisconsin, would minor elections in Wisconsin in April be big news... outside of Electoral-Vote.com?

Waukesha (Pop. 71,000) is a Republican-leaning suburb 10 miles west of Milwaukee. Tuesday it held a so-called nonpartisan election for mayor. It was won by actual-Democrat Alicia Halvensleben, president of the city's Common Council. She defeated "Republican" Scott Allen, a state assemblyman. Her margin was 51.2% to 48.7%. That is significant because the city is the county seat of conservative Waukesha, which Trump won by 20 points in 2024. He won the city of Waukesha by 6 points.

The election shows that Democrats are making inroads on Republican turf in a key swing state, where there is an open-seat race for governor. The combination of gains in Republican suburbs and more Democratic enthusiasm in urban centers could prove critical in the race for governor. It could also be important in two competitive House districts, WI-01 (R+2) and WI-03 (R+3), that Democrats could flip.

The other interesting Wisconsin election was also in a Milwaukee suburb, the city of Port Washington, 27 miles north of Milwaukee on Lake Michigan. It is not very big (Pop. 12,350), but a measure that passed there by a margin of 2-to-1 could have nationwide implications. The measure didn't block the ongoing construction of a data center supported by Donald Trump and the tech industry, but it did require future projects to get voter approval before the city can offer lucrative tax incentives.

The organizer of the initiative, Christine Le Jeune, said people are concerned about transparency, noise pollution, freshwater usage and increased energy costs. Local businesses also supported the measure. So did mayor Ted Neitzke.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. We are going to see similar (and stronger) measures in other places this year and years beyond. People don't like AI, don't like data centers and are very sensitive to potential increased electricity and water costs, no matter what nice stories companies dream up. In Monterey Park, CA, voters will decide in June whether to ban all data centers within the city. In Augusta Township, MI, voters could decide to override a local ordinance that cleared the way for a new data center. In Janesville, about 60 miles southwest of Port Washington, voters will decide on whether to redevelop an old General Motors plant into an AI factory. (V)

Republican Legislators Are Trying to Restrict Ballot Initiatives

As long as we are on the subject of ballot initiatives, how about this? Most states in the West and some others have citizen ballot initiatives in their constitutions. Here is the map of where they exist:

The only states west of the Mississippi River with no referenda are Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Texas and Hawaii, although the kinds of ballot measures allowed varies by state.

Citizen-initiated ballot measures were intentionally inserted in the state constitutions because the authors did not trust politicians and wanted to give citizens a way to override state legislatures. In many states, legislators scoff at the idea that ordinary citizens might know more than the state legislators about what is best for the people. In multiple states, legislators are now trying to get pesky citizens to shut up and bow to what their betters decide. In some states, legislators are trying to make it harder to get measures on the ballot and in others the goal is to make it harder to pass them once they have made it. In all cases, the message is: Kindly shut up and do what you are told by us.

In North Dakota, South Dakota and Utah, the state legislators have put measures on the November ballot requiring measures to get 60% instead of 50% to pass. In Missouri, a ballot measure would require a majority in all eight U.S. House districts. A measure with 95% approval statewide would fail if it got 49% in one House district. The not-very-hidden goal is to eliminate statewide referendums on the sly.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) signed a bill imposing a new raft of rules on initiatives. As a consequence, all 22 citizen initiatives proposed this year failed for one reason or another. For example, groups organizing ballot measures have to pay a fee to have each signature verified. The fees vary by county, but statewide the average is $3.50 per signature. Since about 880,000 signatures are needed to get on the Florida ballot, this means organizers have to pay the state $4-5 million just to have the signatures verified (organizations always collect more than they need since some are always ruled invalid).

Legislators are pleased as punch with all the measures restricting initiatives. President of the Utah Senate Stuart Adams last year said: "We will not let initiatives driven by out-of-state money turn Utah into California." On the other hand, Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, said of the state legislators: "They cannot win fairly so they are changing the rules of the game."

The reason initiatives are a pain in the rear for Republican state legislatures is that they were put in power by gerrymandering, and initiatives are an end run around the gerrymander. If gerrymandering were abolished, then state legislatures would much better represent the will of the people, in which case letting them decide might not be so bad. But that is far from where we are now.

In some cases, the voters do something that the lobbyists who own the state legislators don't like and the legislature gets to work to neuter what the voters have foisted upon them. In some cases the lobbyists are corporations, but in other cases the lobbyists are special-interest groups. For example, in 2024, Missouri voters passed a measure guaranteeing the right to an abortion. Anti-abortion groups don't care what the people want because they know they are right. So the legislature has placed an initiative on the November ballot to undo the evil 2024 initiative. In South Dakota, the voters expanded Medicaid. The legislature would prefer that poor people go somewhere else like, say, North Dakota, so they wrote an initiative to contract Medicaid. In many of these battles, the side with the most money wins.

Once in a while, a state official says the quiet part out loud by accident. Missouri state Rep. Ed Lewis (R) admitted that rules are needed to keep highly populated urban and suburban areas from working their will on lightly populated rural areas. In other words, he opposes rule by the majority and prefers rule by the minority, as long as it is his minority. (V)

The Twenty-Fifth Amendment Is Moving Up in Popularity

Some Americans prize the First Amendment over all the other amendments. Others put the Second Amendment first. The Fifth Amendment is often in the news when somebody noteworthy is testifying about something somewhere. Donald Trump detests the Twenty-Second Amendment, though some people have recently adopted it as their favorite. But now, all of a sudden, the people are openly talking about the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, a relative newcomer to the list.

More than 70 Democratic lawmakers have called on the Cabinet to invoke the Twenty-Fifth to declare Donald Trump unfit for office. For example, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said: "No President in control of his senses would publicly promise to eradicate an entire civilization." Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) tweeted: "We need to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump." Others want to go the impeachment route. Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) tweeted: "Temporary ceasefire or not, Trump already committed an impeachable offense."

As amendment nerds know, but the legislators may or may not know, invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment doesn't remove the president permanently. When the vice president and a majority of the cabinet notify Congress that the president is unable to perform his duties, the vice president becomes acting president. If the president objects, which is a sure thing in this case, then Congress gets to vote on it. It takes two-thirds of each chamber to sustain the removal. This is a steeper hill than impeachment and conviction, where only a single-vote majority is needed for impeachment and again, a two-thirds vote of the Senate for conviction.

If the Democrats are lucky, they could get a majority in the House in November. They are not going to get a two-thirds majority, so going the impeachment route would actually be much easier. If the Democrats also get a simple majority in the Senate, they can also hold an extended televised trial, with numerous legal experts testifying to Trump's high crimes and misdemeanors. If Republicans control the Senate, Majority Leader Thune (R-SD) could simply call for an immediate up-or-down vote on any impeachments coming over from the House and get rid of them in 15 minutes. He could also simply refuse to hold any vote, though that would be stretching the Constitution to the limits.

Another downside to talking about the Twenty-Fifth Amendment (other than it being tougher than an impeachment) is that it puts the onus on the Cabinet. They aren't the problem. They are doing what they were hired to do—carry out Trump's program. The real problem is that Republicans in Congress are the ones responsible for the Constitution being trampled on. It is their job to carefully guard the powers the Constitution grants them, whether it is declaring war, using the power of the purse, levying tariffs, creating independent agencies and more. They should be the ones to take the lead when a president is usurping their powers. Instead they are simulating a doormat. Outsourcing that to the Cabinet is cowardly. (V)

Trump Threatens to Halt International Arrivals at Blue Cities' Airports

Donald Trump has a longstanding tendency to threaten his opponents by saying he is going to do illegal things that he has no authority to do. His most recent threat is to block international travelers at airports in sanctuary (i.e., blue) cities. There are very detailed laws and rules about how international travelers are treated at airports. The president has no authority to pick an airport and say: "No more international flights here." More than 50 million international travelers arrived at the three biggest New York airports alone last year. Many of these people were Americans returning from overseas trips. The president has absolutely no authority to stop Americans with a valid passport from re-entering the country.

The new secretary of DHS, Markwayne Mullin, has already learned what the most important part of his job is: parroting Trump. Mullin mused about closing customs offices at airports in cities he wants to pressure. That would end all international arrivals there, also for Americans. Mullin said: "It's an option. If cities are going to sit there and say that they're not going to enforce immigration policies, then I'll repeat myself and say it doesn't make any sense for us to process international travelers through that city."

Now hold your horses, Mr. Mullin. It is now your job to enforce immigration policies. It is not the job of local officials or local police.

We suspect this is all bark and no bite, as usual. Can you imagine what would happen if a bunch of Silicon Valley executives who were overseas were told that SFO and LAX are closed for international arrivals, so go somewhere else? They might not like that so much and some of these guys have a bit of power of one kind or another. Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post. Elon Musk owns eX-Twitter. David Ellison runs CBS and soon CNN. These guys might not be so happy. Of course, it is possible that Trump will close customs for commercial flights but keep a rump office open for private aviation. (V)

Vance Goes to Hungary

Hungary is having an election on Sunday. Donald Trump is worried that Viktor Orbán's authoritarian party might lose, so he pulled out the big guns to help. He sent J.D. Vance over there to campaign for him. Trump obviously thinks it is fine for one country to interfere in another country's elections. The 2020 presidential election in the U.S. comes to mind here. But just imagine how useful it would be if Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov showed up in North Carolina in October to stump for Michael Whatley. That would surely put Whatley over the top.

Orbán's policies are similar to Trump's: migration, gender ideology and family policy. He has also tried to muzzle the press and defy the courts. He also supports Russia's effort to take over Ukraine. In many ways, Trump admires Orbán's authoritarian rule and wishes he could do that so easily. Vance is the second administration official to show up in Hungary this year. Marco Rubio was there in February.

If the election is honest—definitely not a given in Hungary—Orbán could lose. Polls show that his primary opponent, Péter Magyar (which means "Hungarian" in the Hungarian language), has a substantial lead. However Magyar has an abrasive style and some people call him arrogant.

Although Vance is smarter and more knowledgeable about policy than Trump, sometimes he doesn't do his homework. Hungary has the lowest electricity prices in Europe and Vance has glommed onto that to tell everyone (especially Americans) how great Orbán is. That statement is, in fact, true. But what Vance apparently does not know is why. Hungary is aggressively transitioning to sustainable energy. The Hungarian Green New Deal is advancing rapidly there. Hungary is the country with the highest share of solar power in the electricity mix in the entire world. And the fuel for solar power—sunlight—is indeed very cheap and does not go through the Strait of Hormuz. It is heavily subsidized and there are price controls. Also, there are vast state subsidies to consumers of electricity. If, upon his return, Vance tells Trump that electricity is very cheap in Hungary and Trump asks: "How do they do it?" he probably will not like the answer. (V)

Trump Is Underwater in 104 House Districts Represented by Republicans

As we have pointed out many times, one of the most important factors in the midterms is how popular the president is. As readers know, the House is not one election, but 435 separate, independent elections. So to a considerable extent, what matters is not so much the president's average approval rating nationwide, but his approval rating in each of the 435 congressional districts.

Only a handful of districts have been polled and even then the question now is usually: "Do you prefer the Democrat or the Republican?" Later, names will be filled in in some competitive races. For now, G. Elliott Morris has tried to fill in the missing data using mathematical modeling. For every district, basic demographic information is known. So for every district, it is known how many people are white, how many are Black, how many are under 30 or over 65, how many are rural, suburban, or urban, how many make under $50K or over $100K, how many have 4-year college degrees, and a lot more. From national polling, attitudes toward the president are known for each of these categories.

Consequently, it is possible to run a kind of synthetic poll using advanced mathematical techniques. So, for example, if a district is packed with affluent white college-educated suburbanites averaging $200K, the model will show that Trump's approval is in the (not-so-golden) toilet. However, in a district consisting primarily of white high-school-only working-class men in a dying town in the Rust Belt, the model will show that Trump's approval is high. Morris did the math for every district. No one else has ever done this before, not even Nate Silver, even though the techniques are well understood. It is a lot of leg work chasing down all the data, inputting it, and writing the code to make the model run.

What Morris found is that in 104 congressional districts with a Republican incumbent (and also in 31 states with a Republican senator), Trump is underwater, with a net negative approval rating. That doesn't mean the district or state will necessarily go blue. There are voters who hate Trump bitterly, but hate the Democrats even more. Also, the actual candidates sometimes make a difference, especially if one is especially appealing or especially annoying. Money can also matter sometimes. Gas prices can matter.

Still, any Republican incumbent who hitches his or her wagon to Trump may be in for a rough ride. But if they unhitch it, Trump may bring the hammer down on them. Morris has made the results available here. Note that this link gives you only the first of three pages. Links to the other two are at the top of the page.

Below are the 20 districts where Trump is most deeply underwater (the fourth column). These are undoubtedly districts that Democrats will go after the hardest. The campaigns here will probably feature Trump's broken promises prominently, using campaign video of him promising to lower prices, promising no more wars in the Middle East, and other things he said, depending on the district. For example, in PA-07, which has many blue-collar workers, video footage of Trump promising to revive manufacturing jobs would be a good idea, whereas in AZ-06 (Tucson) that is less of an issue:

Figuring out where to spend money will be a challenge for the DCCC, but data like this are surely helpful. Of course, some judgment is needed to weigh the various factors. In NJ-07, Trump is -19 and he won the district by only 1 point in 2024. In contrast, in TX-15, Trump is -18 but he won the district by 18 points. So should the DCCC target NJ-07 (Tom Kean Jr.) more than TX-15 (Monica de la Cruz)? Maybe. NJ-07 is in the expensive New York Metropolitan media market and TX-15 is in the ultracheap Rio Grande Valley. It could also depend partly on the DCCC's estimate of how good a fit the challenger is to the district. (V)

The White House Will Buy Noem's Flying Bedroom

Rather than killing the purchase of Kristi Noem's flying bedroom that DHS had been leasing, the administration is going ahead and buying the plane. Maybe Donald Trump and Melania want to enjoy some time together away from paparazzi—who knows? In any event, the purchase will go through and the White House has said Melania Trump will have access to the plane.

Officials at ICE were surprised at the decision. They had expected that with Noem and Corey Lewandowski gone, there would be no need to spend $70 million on a luxury aircraft that will clearly not be used to deport anyone. Unless, of course, Trump decides to deport Melania, who worked illegally as a model after she came to the U.S. and before she had legal permission to do so.

Outside groups that are pushing for more deportations are unhappy. R.J. Hauman, director of the National Immigration Center for Enforcement, said: "Wasting tens of millions of dollars on a luxury jet that won't remove a single illegal alien is offensive." Of course, the plane is not nearly as nice as the $400 million 747 the Qataris gave Trump for Air Force One. Still the decision to purchase it as a plaything for Melania and ? is very corrupt. Where are the DOGEys when you need them? (V)

Bondi Is Not Going to Testify

The House Oversight Committee issued a subpoena to former AG Pam Bondi to testify before the Committee. They are curious about the statement she made last year to the effect of "I have the Epstein client list on my desk." They want to know what happened to it.

Now she says that since she is no longer AG, she doesn't have to testify. Of course, the Committee has full authority to subpoena civilians as well as government officials. If the Committee wants to avoid a nasty fight over the subpoena, it could withdraw the old subpoena and issue a new one for Pamela Bondi, private citizen.

If she refuses that one as well, the Committee could move to cite her for contempt of Congress. That would require three Republicans on the Committee to vote for a citation and then the full House. There are almost certainly two GOP votes on the Committee for a citation, Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Nancy Mace (R-SC). Boebert was impregnated at 16 and Mace is a rape survivor. They are very interested in bringing accountability to the Epstein class. When Mace heard that Bondi is not interested in showing up, she said: "The subpoena motion was related to Bondi by name, not by title. She will still have to appear before the Oversight Committee for a sworn deposition." There could be another vote on the Committee, as Republicans who look like they are protecting Epstein's buddies are not popular with the base. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) is not a member of the Oversight Committee, however, so the third vote won't be his. (V)

---

Previous report         Next report

---

If you wish to contact us, please use one of these addresses. For the first two, please include your initials and city.

• questions@electoral-vote.com    For questions about politics, civics, history, etc. to be answered on a Saturday
• comments@electoral-vote.com   For "letters to the editor" for possible publication on a Sunday
• corrections@electoral-vote.com To tell us about typos or factual errors we should fix
• items@electoral-vote.com            For general suggestions, ideas, etc.

To download a poster about the site to hang up, please click here.

---

Email a link to a friend.

---The Votemaster and Zenger