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The resilience of little kids is really something to behold. The munchkin took a bad spill down an entire flight of stairs the other night. One of those falls where I thought we were for sure headed to the emergency room. But she was totally fine. Not even a bruise. Got up and walked it off like she was Derek Jeter. Meanwhile I fell down the same flight of stairs four years ago, broke my foot... and it still hurts.

I know many of you are sick of discussing the war, but unfortunately for all of us it continues to blot out all the other news. Now that we're in Week 5 of this thing, we are starting to get enough high-quality polling to paint a picture of how it's playing on the home front. Short answer: not great! Let's take a quick ride on the poller-coaster and then we can move on.

The new UMass/Amherst poll has Trump at 33% approval, tying his worst-ever poll from Dec. 2017. He's now sub-40% in Nate Silver's tracker, and just above it in the RCP polling average. A slew of Senate polls released over the last few days shows the Dem candidate ahead in all the potential tipping point races: Alaska, Maine, North Carolina, New Hampshire. Put another way, if Election Day were tomorrow, not only would the Dems easily win the House, but they would take the Senate, too. Add in this from the new Harvard/Harris poll: Americans say the economy was better under Biden than Trump, 53-47. Yikes. That is especially notable because Harvard/Harris is a pollster that has turned much more GOP-friendly in recent years. The survey also has decent numbers for Trump on Iran, like 62% of respondents saying Iran represents a direct threat to US national security, and 76% saying we are winning the war. Approval of the war is basically 50-50 in Harvard/Harris, which is better for Trump than I would have expected.

Look, polls are just data points. Take 'em with a grain of salt. But when you start seeing an American president polling in the 30s in high-quality national surveys, that is a giant flashing red light for the administration. Especially when it happens so early in the term. Jimmy Carter didn't start testing the 30s until the spring of '79, or 2+ years into his term. For Dubya, it wasn't until after Katrina. At this rate, Trump is speed-running the worst parts of those failed presidencies (energy crisis + Middle East quagmire) with an added bonus of elevated inflation and a moribund job market. America's Golden Age, indeed.

Trump, of course, has never been a popular president, and his power derives not from broad-based public approval but by the vice grip he holds on his party. And that hasn't loosened all that much. Republican voters are more or less with the POTUS on the war. But the bottom has fallen out among independents, who have broken with him completely on virtually every issue now. And when they go, it's tough getting them back.

On the war front, the latest development comes via the WSJ, which continues to act as the White House's go-to source for strategic leaks. The Journal is reporting Trump has told advisers he is willing to end the war without reopening the Strait of Hormuz first. They used to call this the “cut-and-run" strategy, fwiw, and it was the Republican attack line against John Kerry that cost him the presidency in 2004, but that is neither here nor there. Under this scenario, we would try to spin a win out of achieving a number of our military goals (destroying Iran's navy and setting back its missile and nuke programs), while also creating a gigantic new problem and leaving it for the rest of the world to figure out. Honestly, it's kind of the perfectly Trumpian way this could end. We break it, you own it.

Or maybe it's just another bluff. Even Trump would have a hard time spinning that as a win. Iran would go from controlling 5% of the world's energy supply to 20% overnight? And now they're charging a toll? This would look like the biggest US strategic defeat since Vietnam ...because it would be. So, color me skeptical. I think the administration is floating these various trial balloons to see how they play domestically, keep the Iranians guessing, and of course to try and calm markets. The WSJ headline did spark a rally in stock futures this morning, of course, coming a day after oil settled over $100 for the first time of the war and gas crossed $4 on the national average. But you can only keep doing this for so long before you torch your credibility completely.

So maybe that's all there is to it. Calm markets. Buy time. Trust the plan. Or maybe Trump realizes he got rolled by the Israelis, this thing is not going as well as he was told it would, and now he's testing the fences for a way out.

One other, related, thing I wanted to touch on today. Israel's parliament just passed a law approving the death penalty by hanging for Palestinians convicted in their military courts of murdering Israelis. Members of Netanyahu's hard-right government, wearing noose pins on their suits (seriously), celebrated the passage of this law with a Champagne toast in the Knesset. Bibi even showed up in person to cast his vote. Now, the hardcore Zionists will tell you this law is needed because if Israel can just execute their Palestinian detainees rather than keep them in jail, it deprives groups like Hamas of a negotiating chit for hostages in future wars.

Maybe that's true, I don't know. But I don't care! I do not want my tax dollars going to any of this anymore. I do not want my tax dollars being spent to hang Palestinians in the gallows, like it’s the 19th century. I do not want my tax dollars going to bomb children. Did you know we hit a second school in Iran, according to this new NYT investigation? I want out. I want nothing to do with any of this. Israel wants to flatten Iran so it can be the regional hegemon, and they are welcome to use their status as a nuclear-armed, economic and intelligence powerhouse to do it. But not with my money. That is a completely reasonable response for an average American taxpayer to have after watching our client state’s behavior over the last three years. Do not let anyone tell you differently.

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Carlo Versano is Newsweek's Director of Politics and Culture. He has in-depth knowledge and experience covering a range of topics and stories over a 20-year career in the news business. Carlo joined Newsweek in 2024 after a stint at The Messenger. Before that, he was an Emmy-winning producer at NBC News. He is a graduate of the University of Richmond and the New School. You can get in touch with Carlo by emailing [email protected].

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By Jasmine Laws

Judge Aileen Cannon, who has long-been accused of bias by critics in relation to her handling of President Donald Trump's classified documents case, now faces perhaps her starkest neutrality test yet.

Florida-based Judge Cannon may have thought she put Trump's classified documents case to bed last month, when in a February 23 order she barred anyone at the Justice Department (DOJ) from "releasing, distributing, conveying, or sharing with anyone outside the Department of Justice any information or conclusions" from prosecutor Jack Smith's report.

However, the ink was barely dry when new revelations emerged last week that pose a fresh headache for Cannon.

I attended the White House press briefing yesterday, where Karoline Leavitt fielded question after question about the state of the Iran war.

Despite several questions on the matter, Leavitt revealed very little new information. Though she did make one revealing comment, saying that reopening Hormuz was not a core objective of the mission. That came a few hours before the WSJ story, cited by Carlo above. She also repeatedly said it would be unwise to disclose the president’s strategy and insisted Trump is seeking a deal, though she did not share what such a deal would look like.

When asked about the additional deployment of troops to the Middle East, she said the Pentagon’s job is to present the president with options so he can take swift action if he chooses.

Another major topic was the DHS shutdown. Leavitt blamed Democrats for voting against reopening the department and did not signal that a deal was close.

Overall, it was a far more serious briefing than others I have covered, but that is not surprising. The war is escalating, the DHS shutdown is now the longest in history, Congress is on vacation, and the president’s approval numbers are continuing to slide to new record lows.

This week I watched Democrats tear themselves apart over a Twitch streamer. Not metaphorically—they actually argued about whether the party should embrace him.

The setup: A Michigan Senate candidate invited Hasan Piker, a far-left influencer with millions of young followers, to campaign with him. Instantly, other Democrats called him out. Too controversial. Too risky.

But here's the thing: Democrats are desperate. Young men abandoned the party in 2024 at historic rates. And Piker reaches them in ways no politician can. Speaking to Carlo for The 1600, his diagnosis was blunt: "They're terrified of taking real positions, so they just say, 'We're not the Republicans.' That's not enough."

So, Democrats are in a bind... Do you embrace someone controversial because he talks to young men? Or do you keep your distance and keep losing them?

Trump's already losing ground with this group anyway, which makes the calculation even sharper. But it reveals something deeper about the Democratic Party right now—they don't know how to speak to young men without sounding fake or out of touch.

It's a real problem. And Hasan Piker is forcing them to finally confront it.

Read the full story for more on how this divide is reshaping Democratic strategy heading into 2026.

"Our troops are about to deploy and are deploying right now because you pushed our president into it. President Trump has agency, not excusing him, but let's be honest — Lindsey Graham pushed this more than anyone, and the nerve to then go blow bubbles at Disney while our troops are endangering themselves because he wanted them to. I just find this so heartless, so f**king tone deaf."

— Megyn Kelly in response to Sen. Lindsey Graham being seen walking around Disney World with a bubble wand.

Newsweek is part of the Trust Project, which focuses on honesty, accuracy and fairness in journalism. Read more about our best practices. To get in touch with our newsroom with suggestions on how to point out possible errors, please contact us at [email protected].