The collapse of a fragile ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran has pushed the Trump administration’s war with Tehran into a “bleak new phase,” said Politico. “This is what a quagmire looks like,” said a “person close to the White House” to the outlet. Republicans in particular are “distressed about the war’s economic impact on everyday Americans” ahead of midterm elections “expected to hinge on cost-of-living issues.” 

After a “long time in a gray area that was neither war nor peace,” both sides are “shooting at each other,” and “war is back,” said the Washington Examiner. “Politically, the threat that the war presents to Republican prospects in the midterm elections is back too.”

Republicans now face a “political worst-case scenario” during a campaign season in which their “majorities are at stake,” said The New York Times. They are being asked to “vote to fund an unpopular war over which they have had no meaningful oversight” and which they have “never voted to approve.” 

The “intensifying” conflict and its impact on gas prices has prompted “fresh alarm among GOP lawmakers” now urging President Donald Trump to “find a way to reopen the Strait of Hormuz as soon as possible to avoid an angry backlash from voters,” said The Hill. In Washington, a “fierce debate is brewing among defense hawks” in the House and Senate “over how to meet” the Defense Department’s financial and material needs, said The Washington Post. Although “some Republicans want more,” others are “uncomfortable approving big sums for a war that’s proving unpopular among voters.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has urged partner nations to “collaborate against” what he characterizes as the “growing threat of left-wing terrorism,” said the BBC. Rubio made his pitch to “representatives from more than 60 countries” at a Trump administration-hosted conference this week, where the White House claimed “left-wing political violence was the result of a ‘unique evil rooted in a deep resentment toward civilization.’” 

The conference on the “supposed threat” was peppered with “diatribes, harsh even by the standards of the Trump administration, against leftism,” said The Guardian. Leftists are driven by “envy and hatred," and protesters against Trump policies are “all deformed in some way, in ​their appearance, in their ⁠dress, in their mannerism,” said White House strategist Stephen Miller to attendees. 

The Trump administration has “faced criticism previously” from experts and lawmakers who claim it has “highlighted violence in the U.S.” from the left while “playing down or overlooking incidents attributed to far-right extremists,” said NBC News. Last year, the Justice Department removed research from its website showing “far-right actors” were behind the “bulk of ideologically motivated lethal attacks in the U.S.” 

The Rubio-led conference “sparked Democratic concerns” that the White House is both “politicizing counterterrorism efforts” and potentially “diverting resources from other extremist threats,” said Reuters. Rubio’s insistence on the “dangers posed by far-left terrorism” was also “met with skepticism by some allies,” whose own security officials “did not assess the threat with the same level of severity as right-wing or Islamist terrorism,” said The Washington Post.

House Republicans wade into Caitlin Clark controversies