Ariel Edwards-Levy of NCS reported right now {that a} new NCS ballot performed by the general public opinion analysis agency SSRS discovered that 70% of grownup Americans disapprove of the way in which President Donald J. Trump is dealing with the financial system whereas solely 30% approve. A whopping 75% disapprove of how Trump is dealing with inflation, whereas solely 25% approve. When it involves gasoline costs, the numbers are even worse for the president: 79% disapprove whereas solely 21% approve. Sixty-five % assume Trump’s personal financial insurance policies have harm the nation, whereas solely 22% assume these insurance policies have improved the financial system.
Seventy-three % of these polled mentioned Trump hasn’t paid sufficient consideration to the nation’s most essential issues, whereas 27% mentioned he has the correct priorities. Sixty-six % agreed that Trump places his personal acquire over the nice of the nation; 34% agreed that he doesn’t. Only 43% of these polled thought Trump “has the stamina and sharpness to serve effectively as president,” whereas 57% didn’t agree with that assertion.
As Edwards-Levy notes, Trump’s general approval score within the new NCS ballot matches his score simply after the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol—his lowest ever—at 34%. The variety of those that strongly disapprove of him is 50%, a brand new excessive, whereas solely 15% strongly help him, a document low.
Edwards-Levy factors out that individuals polled aren’t eager on the way in which Trump’s dealing with the scenario in Iran: 72% disapprove whereas solely 28% approve. Sixty-seven % assume his actions there have harm the U.S., whereas solely 21% assume these actions have helped the U.S. So, as she places it: “Just 28% approve of his handling of the situation in Iran, 25% on inflation and 21% on gas prices, with significant pockets of disapproval even among his supporters.”
Americans sad with Trump’s conflict on Iran are unlikely to be cheered by the information from that battle over the previous few days.
Andrew Egger wrote in The Bulwark right now about how the Trump administration appears caught in a loop, “orbiting hopelessly around two demonstrably failed positions: If we bomb the hell out of them, they’ll give us what we want. If we stop bombing them, they’ll give us what we want.” Adina Renner of the New York Times right now referred to as this “The Whiplash War” and offered charts of assaults displaying what this looping appears like every day. Meanwhile, Iranian negotiators have made their calls for fairly clear: sanctions eliminated, troops out, no extra dialogue of nuclear weapons, and Iranian management of the Strait of Hormuz.
Laura Wise, a scholar of peace and battle decision on the University of Edinburgh, advised Renner that the method of ending the conflict has been difficult by the very fact American negotiators appear targeted on “getting a deal rather than making peace.”
Davis Winkie of NCS reported that on Saturday, the Pentagon modified the way in which it was accounting for navy personnel injured within the Iran conflict. After the removing from Defense Casualty Analysis System of 4 service members killed by Iranian strikes in Jordan and Iraq final week created an outcry and introduced renewed consideration to accusations the Pentagon was not being clear concerning the human toll of the conflict, on Saturday the Pentagon added greater than 140 further troopers to the database and restored the 4 lacking troopers.
The numbers now present 18 troops lifeless and one other 624 wounded since February 28, when Trump started strikes towards Iran.
Over the weekend, navy strikes within the area paused as Trump determined towards an escalation. According to U.S. officers who spoke to Eric Schmitt and Jonathan Swan of the New York Times, that call got here partly as a result of the U.S. navy is working low on Patriot antimissile interceptors and different air protection munitions essential to shoot down Iranian missiles.
The journalists reported that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine had warned that additional fight would “dangerously deplete” interceptors, a leak that implies actual dissent throughout the White House over the execution of the conflict. On Meet the Press on Sunday, U.N. Ambassador Mike Waltz advised host Kristen Welker that any issues with munitions have been former President Joe Biden’s fault however added that the U.S. has “everything that it needs to conduct this campaign…and…the people who are leaking this nonsense deserve to be in jail.”
Top advisors additionally expressed concern over a widening conflict and the financial crunch brought about by the disaster.
But yesterday, U.S. Central Command posted that forces from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had launched missiles “in an attempted surprise attack on U.S. forces.” Jared Malsin and Suha Ma’ayeh of the Wall Street Journal famous that this shock assault is the primary through which the Iranians have gone on offense. Hamidreza Azizi, a visiting fellow specializing in Iran on the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, advised the journalists that this shift signifies Iranian officers “see themselves as having the upper hand. It was a signal of a sort of calibrated escalation.”
They may need elevated confidence as a result of, as John Irish and Jonathan Saul of Reuters reported yesterday, they’re anticipating a cargo of as much as 400 Chinese-made shoulder-fired air protection missile launchers inside weeks.
U.S. Central Command mentioned all of final evening’s Iranian missiles have been intercepted. Trump nonetheless took the assaults poorly, telling the Fox News Channel: “We are going to beat the f*cking sh*t out of them. We’ll be hitting them hard. They’re going to get a beating.” U.S. and Saudi Arabian forces struck towards an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq.
Oil costs rose with the information of renewed strikes. Despite considerations about rising inflation, the Federal Open Market Committee voted 9 to three to carry rates of interest regular; the three dissenting regional Fed financial institution presidents voted to lift rates of interest. Concern over inflation and uncertainty concerning the financial system despatched the inventory market plunging right now in its worst day since April 2025, when Trump introduced his “Liberation Day” tariffs.
And so, Republicans are devoting themselves to serving purple meat to their MAGA base, ginning up sound bites for distribution on social media.
On the menu right now was Dr. Anthony Fauci, the 85-12 months-previous former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases who, serving in that capability for 38 years, suggested seven totally different presidents of each events. President George W. Bush awarded Fauci the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work in creating the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which has saved an estimated 26 million lives. Trump named Fauci to the President’s Coronavirus Task Force in January 2020.
But, as Savannah Behrmann and Jeanine Santucci of USA Today reported in October 2020, Trump turned on Fauci as he cautioned towards Trump’s assured predictions that the illness would disappear rapidly. By February 28, Trump insisted that Democrats have been “politicizing” covid, and by April 26, information broke that Trump needed to sideline Fauci, though Fauci was thought of reliable and considered favorably by a 3:1 margin.
By the summer season, as Trump’s panic over how the financial disaster brought about by the pandemic may harm his reelection prospects, he turned on Fauci, who continued to help measures to cease the unfold of the illness. Trump labored to undermine Fauci’s warnings, saying that the medical doctors and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been “lying” about covid.
By July, he mused about why Fauci had a excessive approval score and he didn’t. When Fauci testified to Congress that U.S. circumstances have been spiking whereas European international locations have been seeing sharp drops in covid circumstances as a result of European international locations had shut down 95% of their economies whereas the U.S. had shut down solely 50%, Trump posted: “Wrong! We have more cases because we have tested far more than any other country…. If we tested less, there would be less cases.”
As Trump continued to criticize Fauci and but ran a marketing campaign advert suggesting Fauci endorsed his reelection, the physician continued to emphasise that he was “not a political person.” He added: “And I have never—either directly or indirectly—endorsed a political candidate.” In October he dismissed Trump’s assaults, saying: “They don’t bother me. I know what my job is, and I’ve gotta do it and I’m going to do it. So that kind of—whatever you want to call it—is to me, I just, it’s noise.”
As Aaron Rupar reminded us right now, Trump himself awarded a presidential commendation to Fauci “in recognition of [his] exceptional effort on Operation Warp Speed.”
But with the arrival of a vaccine that helped to place the worst of the pandemic behind us, MAGA Republicans started to demonize Dr. Fauci not solely because the supply of the masks mandates and college shutdowns they hated, but in addition because the supply of the virus itself, alleging—with out proof—that the illness had escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, for which the U.S. National Institutes of Health offered funding.
After voters reelected Trump to the presidency in 2024, he and his loyalists vowed to prosecute Fauci. Trump ally Steve Bannon referred to as for “rough Roman justice” for Fauci, in addition to particular counsel Jack Smith and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley. Before he left workplace, former president Joe Biden issued a preemptive pardon for Fauci—and others—to guard them from political prosecution, saying: “The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense.”
But Republicans have continued to demonize Fauci, ginning up anger towards him of their base at the same time as the remainder of the nation has moved on. Now, with the political tides working so strongly towards the Republicans earlier than the 2026 midterm elections, they’re clearly attempting to rekindle the fury of the final presidential election.
As the Associated Press reported right now, for years, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has accused Fauci of mendacity concerning the origins of covid, an accusation Fauci has referred to as “preposterous” in testimony earlier than Congress. Paul has repeatedly referred to as for Fauci’s arrest and imprisonment and, in 2023, printed a ebook with Fauci on the quilt, explicating what he referred to as the “Great Covid Cover-Up.”
The Trump administration has fed Paul’s campaign, with Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. looking for eight months to seek out Fauci’s personal diary on authorities computer systems, then handing the information over to Paul and to Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI). Neither Kennedy, Paul, nor Johnson advised Fauci that they had obtained his 1,000-web page diary earlier than they printed it, in full, final week.
In July 2021, Fauci wrote in his diary that an evaluation of the viruses used within the Wuhan lab “clearly indicate(s) that it is molecularly impossible for the viruses under the auspices of the NIH grant to have been manipulated into or evolved into” the covid virus.
Now chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Paul subpoenaed Fauci in June to look earlier than the committee. Unwillingly, as his legal professionals famous Paul’s many statements calling for Fauci to be jailed, Fauci did so right now.
In a gap assertion, Fauci mentioned that he believed “the sole reason [Paul] is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something—anything—that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, quote, behind bars, unquote.”
“Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion,” he mentioned. “Therefore, although it pains me to do so because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the 5th Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions.”
More than 100 occasions he did precisely that as Republicans berated him, calling him “a narcissist and a megalomaniac and a liar,” mocking him, and asking him, “Do you feel like you’re in deep sh*t?” What Republicans didn’t do is introduce any proof that the 85-12 months-previous lifelong public servant had damaged any legal guidelines.
More to the purpose was Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH) yelling at Fauci about closings in the course of the pandemic, blustering: “Who the f*ck do you think you were?” F-bombs are uncommon on the Senate flooring, and the outburst has gotten vital media consideration.
That consideration has distracted from the opposite cause Moreno is within the information. As Abby Vesoulis of Mother Jones reported, Moreno has mentioned nothing as his daughter’s ex-husband, Representative Max Miller (R-OH), has been credibly charged with the violent abuse of her and their 2-12 months-previous daughter. As the Republicans battle to carry on to their congressional majorities, Republican leaders have refused to name for Miller, who’s working for a 3rd time period, to resign.
—
Notes:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28520039-News Central Site-july-poll-conducted-by-ssrs/
https://www.newscentral.site/2026/07/26/politics/iran-war-casualties
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/28/oil-price-today-wti-brent-us-iran-hormuz.html
https://www.npr.org/2026/07/29/nx-s1-5910558/federal-reserve-interest-rates-inflation
https://www.newscentral.site/2026/07/29/business/live-news/federal-reserve-interest-rate-07-29-26
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/25/us/politics/trump-iran-military.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/20/us/politics/biden-pardons-fauci-milley-cheney-jan-6.html
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/14/nx-s1-5183846/trump-presidency-retribution-enemies-threats
https://www.newscentral.site/2026/07/28/politics/anthony-fauci-diary-rand-paul
https://apnews.com/article/fauci-diaries-covid-origins-rand-paul-6b25da9f75a0becbaf2886ab22643e67
https://abcnews.com/US/wireStory/latest-dr-fauci-invokes-amendment-republican-led-covid-135186465
https://apnews.com/article/fauci-covid19-pandemic-senate-rand-paul-a774a79e46824ebec9e8e270b9cb9825
https://tiffinohio.net/posts/max-miller-gun-hot-water-allegations-republicans-silent/
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/17/fed-interest-rate-decision-june-2026.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/29/anthony-fauci-pandemic-fifth-contempt-rand-paul-01015548
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/29/us/politics/fauci-biden-pardon-covid-hearing.html
https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/the-u-s-presidents-emergency-plan-for-aids-relief-pepfar/
X:
CENTCOM/status/2082231500318114110?s=20
atrupar/status/2082447372198588869
Bluesky:
mickeykuhns.bsky.social/post/3mrkttn5nlk25