Iran War Surges Inflation as Trump’s Approval Rate Hits Record Low

Inflation is surging under President Trump, reaching its highest level in three years thanks to the Iran war, and more Americans than ever don’t trust him on the economy.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly report Tuesday showing that inflation rose to 3.8 percent in April, a higher rate than wages, which grew at 3.6 percent. The price of oil is a big reason why, as it is up more than 70 percent since January thanks to the Iran war. As of Tuesday morning, the average national price for a gallon of gas is $4.50.

The worst is still yet to come, though; the full effect of high gas prices will not affect everything else for a few more months, according to Citigroup, who told its clients Monday that “energy costs likely would not start to feed through to core goods prices for at least a few more months.”

Meanwhile, a new CNN poll shows that 70 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, with 77 percent of Americans (and a majority of Republicans) saying that the cost of living has gone up in their community. Only a third of Americans approve of how Trump is helping the middle class, 26 percent of Americans approve of his performance on inflation, and just 21 percent do on gas prices.

According to the poll, Democrats are trusted more on the cost of living, helping the middle class, and inflation. But on the economy overall, almost a third of Americans don’t trust either party. Trump and his fellow Republicans may be in trouble during November’s midterms (barring the effects of redistricting), but Democrats will have to show that they can fight to improve Americans’ economic conditions.

Survivors of sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein will be publicly testifying for the first time on Tuesday in Palm Beach County, Florida—where Epstein was first investigated, arrested, and given a baffling sweetheart plea deal.

The women, along with Congress members and other witnesses, will be offering testimony at a House Oversight field hearing regarding just how Epstein was able to secure a deal that allowed him to leave jail for hours at a time during his 13-month sentence for soliciting prostitution, even as allegations of his abuse of underage girls gained steam.

“For some reason, they allowed a predator to go loose for many, many years,” Florida Congresswoman Lois Frankel said. “Probably hundreds of young women were sexually abused because of the way this case was handled.… This is an opportunity really to put some focus back where it started.… Maybe to get some answers from some of the folks as to why this miscarriage of justice occurred.”

The hearing, organized by House Democrats, is set to begin at 10 a.m.

A Republican Virginia lawmaker is facing calls to resign after she agreed with a wildly racist statement about Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Representative Jen Kiggans appeared on Richmond-based radio commentator Rich Herrera’s show Monday to discuss the state’s hotly contested congressional maps. But the since-deleted interview flew off the rails when Kiggans emphatically concurred with Herrera after he referred to Jeffries as a slave.

“He spent $20 million-plus on our redistricting debacle we had. He now is talking about … firing our Supreme Court justices,” Herrera said of Jeffries. House Majority Forward, a nonprofit connected to Jeffries, spent roughly $40 million on the redistricting effort.

“If Hakeem Jeffries wants to be involved in Virginia politics, then I suggest he … leave New York, move down here to Virginia, run for office down here, you can represent us,” Herrera continued. “If not, get your cotton-picking hands off of Virginia.”

“That’s right. Ditto. Yes. Yes, to that,” Kiggans replied.

The term “cotton-picking hands” is heavily rooted in the history of U.S. slavery, literally referring to the Black men, women, and children who were forced to pick cotton.

Kiggans is up for reelection in November. One of her opponents in the race, former Representative Elaine Luria, wrote Monday evening that “the racist comments proudly endorsed today by Jen Kiggans … are disgusting and beneath any elected official.”

“I grew up in the South. I know what these racist dog whistles mean,” Luria added.

The number two House Democrat, Minority Whip Katherine Clark, called on Kiggans to resign shortly after clips of the interview were made public.

In a statement on X, Kiggans claimed that she did not agree with the host’s remark and that it was “obvious” she was responding to the larger argument about Jeffries’s involvement in the redistricting effort. She argued that the nationwide political rebuke was “precisely what’s wrong with Democrats.”

“Every lie and distortion is intended to distract from getting their hats handed to them and the Virginia Supreme Court’s clear message: stop trying to rig our elections,” Kiggans wrote. “Democrats are trying to destroy Virginia’s court because they disagree with it. THAT is the real danger to our country.”

By Tuesday morning, the radio interview had been taken off Apple Podcasts, as well as the host’s YouTube channel.

Kiggans’s comments come at a volatile time in U.S. history. Late last month, the Supreme Court effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act by ruling that Louisiana’s congressional maps amounted to unconstitutional racial gerrymandering since they included two Black-majority voting districts.

This story has been updated.

A disturbing trend emerged in President Donald Trump’s latest Truth Social tirade.

Trump posted more than 55 times in just three hours on Monday night, unloading a ton of conspiracy theory content targeting former President Barack Obama, peppered with videos of Black people causing mayhem.

Trump’s onslaught began by claiming that Obama had attempted a coup and boosting a call to “arrest Obama the traitor.” He then posted months-old coverage of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s claims that the Obama administration had pushed the “lie” that Russian President Vladimir Putin preferred Trump over Hillary Clinton to win the 2016 election, which was something Putin has openly admitted.

As Trump continued to post, his allegations got increasingly outlandish. The president shared posts claiming that Obama made $120 million from Obamacare and accusing Obama of “the most heinous crimes committed in American history,” including wiretapping Trump Tower. Other posts mentioned figures such as Senator Mark Kelly, Clinton, and Jack Smith, but Obama’s name appeared over and over again.

After about half an hour of nonstop posting, Trump interrupted his screed against his political enemies to share a video that appeared to show young Black people stealing from a convenience store. “This is why the convenience store chain ‘Wawa’ is closing stores one after another,” the post read.

Then Trump posted another video that purported to show a Black woman working for DoorDash picking up an order, only to be discovered eating the food in her car. “Always scheming,” the post read.

The president also shared a video of a Black man purposefully knocking over a waiter’s tray in a restaurant. “I wouldn’t call him a man,” the post read. “A real man would never disrespect another person like this. I’ll call him what he is, a POS!”

Trump resumed his political posting, sharing a video in which right-wing lawyer Mike Davis called Obama a “demonic force.”

This wouldn’t be the first time Trump’s social media spiraling has taken on racist overtones as he targets Obama. In February, the president shared a video on Truth Social that ended with a short clip of the Obamas’ laughing heads superimposed on the bodies of apes.

Trump continued his deranged posting into the night, and then resumed it when the sun came up. He posted Tuesday morning about a fictional “Federal Victory Note” currency that had his face on it, an AI-generated meme about “Hakeem ‘Low IQ’ Jeffries,” and another AI image of Obama, Joe Biden, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi swimming in a sewage-filled Reflecting Pool.

Tickets to President Trump’s planned UFC fight on the White House lawn are going to cost a hefty amount.

NBC News reports that even though the UFC is paying for the event and tickets are technically free, sponsorship packages, including ringside seats, are going for $1 million-plus, with BBC Sport putting them as high as $1.5 million. Neither the White House nor the UFC has said where the sponsorship money is going.

Trump is personally selecting most of the 4,000-plus spectators for the event, to be held on June 14, which happens to be his eightieth birthday.

“I’m going to make a lot of enemies because it’s impossible to get everyone tickets,” Trump told NBC Friday in a telephone interview.

Trump will likely reward people who have given him political or business favors in the past, or those who are willing to pay up to attend. White House communications director Steven Cheung told NBC that Trump was splitting up his tickets among administration staffers, military servicemembers, and VIPs. The last group could include anyone Trump wants, including members of Congress and foreign dignitaries.

“I get calls, texts or emails every day—a few times every day,” Cheung, a former UFC spokesperson, said of the ticket requests he and other White House staffers are getting. UFC’s own president and CEO Dana White said last month that he only had taken about 200 tickets for himself and gave the rest to Trump, while TKO controls another 200.

An unnamed Trump adviser told NBC that the event is “his show, and it’s being treated that way.”

“The process has been absolute chaos,” the adviser said. “It’s hard to overstate how many requests have come in, but there is no doubt the people President Trump wants there will be there, and those he does not will not be.”

The president and CEO of UFC parent company TKO Holdings, Mark Shapiro, said in an earnings call earlier this month that the company expected to lose as much as $30 million on the event.

Knowing Trump, he’s going to take whatever money he can from the fight, and Republicans in Congress will work to ensure that there is no transparency (possibly in exchange for tickets). The spectacle will essentially be a circus, trading off the presidency, with Trump as a monarch watching people fight for his amusement in the octagon or to get a seat by his side.

Democrats asked the Supreme Court Monday to block a state judiciary ruling that upended their redistricting effort.

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled Friday that the proposed maps were essentially invalid because state Democrats did not follow proper procedure. In Virginia, the General Assembly is required to pass a constitutional amendment not just once, but twice. The first vote must be conducted during a regularly scheduled legislative election, while the second vote has to take place after, before the question is put to voters.

The court ruled last week that, although state Democrats complied with those regulations, the timeframe in which it was conducted was compromised since early voting on the matter was already underway. The party’s unsuccessful counterargument turned to long-standing decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, which has held that even if early voting is underway, an election does not happen until Election Day itself.

Virginians narrowly passed the referendum last month, despite a 2020 state policy that relegated redistricting to 10-year intervals aligned with the national census. Roughly 50.3 percent of the state voted in favor of redrawing the voting map, giving their representatives a chance to squeeze more Democratic seats into the U.S. House at midterms.

The new maps were expected to alter the state’s congressional split to overwhelmingly favor Democrats, switching from a 6–5 split to 10–1.

“The Court overrode the will of the people who ratified the amendment by ordering the Commonwealth to conduct its election with the congressional districts that the people rejected,” wrote lawyers for Virginia Democrats and the state’s Democratic Attorney General Jay Jones, in a statement obtained by the Associated Press. The attorneys added that “the irreparable harm resulting from the Supreme Court of Virginia’s decision is profound and immediate.”

The judicial decision was a major setback for the national liberal party, which had placed enormous weight on Virginia to offset successful Republican redistricting efforts in other areas of the country, such as Texas and Florida. The Supreme Court filing is an act of desperation as the party grasps for various solutions to offset the national Republican advantage heading into the midterm election cycle.

On Saturday, lawmakers met with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to discuss other potential solutions in the wake of the Virginia decision, including a bank-shot proposal to redraw the state’s congressional lines anyway.

President Donald Trump accidentally just handed Democrats another sound bite they can use to destroy him.

During an appearance on Fox News Monday, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly was asked to explain Trump’s thinking about high energy prices.

Kelly claimed Trump was “clear-eyed” about the rising gas prices, adding that Iran had been “incredibly decimated” militarily and “totally crippled” economically.

“The president is not in a rush—he has all the cards at his disposal, because he knows that Iran is getting weaker and weaker by the day, while the United States is getting stronger and stronger,” she said.

Kelly’s insistence that Trump is in control of the disaster he created in the Middle East is at once both deluded and damaging.

Shackled by sycophancy, Kelly insisted that Trump maintains a mastery over world events, including the economic disruption that is hurting Americans. He could end our suffering with a snap of his fingers, but he’s “not in a rush.” In reality, Trump’s demonstrated inability to strike a deal with Iran after more than two months shows just how out of control this situation has become.

Meanwhile, the average price of gas in the United States reached more than $4.50 per gallon Sunday, according to the AAA motor club. U.S. households are expected to pay at least $876 more on gas this year than last year, according to Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee.

But speaking in the Oval Office Monday, Trump claimed that there was no cause for concern, because gas prices would “drop like a rock” as soon as Iran relinquished its grip on the Strait of Hormuz.

It’s not clear this will be anytime soon, as reports suggest Trump has spoken hyperbolically about the extent of destruction in Iran. A recent CIA analysis suggested that Iran could survive another three to four months under the U.S. military blockade without experiencing severe economic hardships. The president has also overstated the damage to Iranian military assets while the Pentagon has downplayed the extensive damage to U.S. military assets.

Jeffrey Epstein associate and former child actor Brock Pierce was a guest at one of Donald Trump’s Florida golf courses last week, helping to unveil a golden statue of the president.

Pierce was a business partner and friend to Epstein for nearly a decade, helping him invest in the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase while emailing him about women. In 2012 Pierce told Epstein, “I had a great time with the girls. Hope they had fun too. Thanks.”

Also that year, Pierce sent Epstein dozens of pictures of a Ukrainian woman named Anastasia, writing that “Ukraine is now my favorite country,” after Epstein asked him to “take photos and find me a present.”

In 2018, Pierce emailed Epstein about how he had “a boat in Antigua full of amazing Ukraine’s finest” waiting for him.

This is the man who was cutting the ribbon for the golden statue at the president’s resort last week.

Senator John Fetterman has aligned himself with one more MAGA talking point.

The Pennsylvania Democrat appeared on Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast Monday, laughing alongside the “anti-woke” comedian as the pair mutually praised Donald Trump’s “honest” treatment of the press, including an instance in which the president called a female journalist a “piggy.”

“The things that he says aloud, the way he just voices his interior monologue—there is something not exactly psychologically normal about someone who just voices their interior monologue—but it gives him an authenticity that no one else can possibly match,” Maher said.

“I saw his interview with Norah O’Donnell after the shooting, the next day, and she quotes the assassin who called him a pedophile, Hitler, whatever he called him,” Maher continued, referring to the attack on the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and taking a moment to suggest that Trump is not a pedophile. “But his reaction immediately was, to her, ‘You’re a terrible person.’ And he didn’t just think it—like any politician, that’s exactly what they’re thinking. He just says it.”\

“It’s at the same time horrifying and also kind of like, refreshing. It’s shockingly—the honesty, as someone who loves honesty and has made my career about it as much as I could, it is—there’s some level of it where you tip your hat and you go, ‘Wow, total honesty,’” said the longtime political satirist.

Amused, Fetterman responded: “Yeah, the ultimate—‘Quiet, piggy.’ That’s the president of America.”

Trump routinely insults reporters in order to evade their questions. The moment Fetterman referred to took place in November, when Trump ended a line of questioning about the Epstein files by barking at a female Bloomberg News reporter, “Quiet! Quiet, piggy.”

Fetterman has displayed a penchant for Trumpian politics since he moved to Washington, despite the fact that he ran on the progressive ticket. Since Fetterman entered office in 2023, he has sided with Republicans dozens of times, frequently leveraging his position to advance Trump’s agenda.

He also voted to confirm several of Trump’s Cabinet selections, including Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin as well as the last Homeland Security chief, Kristi Noem, who was transferred to work in a relatively unknown section of the government in March following a string of embarrassing scandals.

Residents in Arizona are struggling to receive SNAP benefits as the state rushes to install new eligibility requirements set by Donald Trump’s “one, big, beautiful bill,” NBC News reported Monday.

Since Trump’s behemoth budget bill passed last July, setting in motion nearly $187 million in cuts from SNAP over the next 10 years, 3.5 million people have fallen off SNAP rolls nationwide. The law requires able-bodied adults between ages 18 and 64 without dependents to work 80 hours a month, or 20 hours a week, to qualify for SNAP benefits.

Arizona has moved rapidly to comply with Trump’s new requirements, increasing the amount of documentation individuals must produce and bolstering the review process. The result: As of March, there had been a 50 percent decrease in the state’s SNAP enrollees compared to just a year earlier—the largest drop-off in the country—including 200,000 children.

In the rush to enforce these new requirements, it seems many eligible Americans have also been pushed off the program.

Following a months-long paperwork back-and-forth with state employees, Tiffany Hudson, a single mother of two young children, decided to show up in person to the state Department of Economic Security office. Despite being exempt from the new work requirements, Hudson said she’d stopped receiving her $600 in SNAP benefits three months ago.

“It’s been really hard. We’ve been going to food banks every week,” Hudson told NBC News. “We’re eating less, we’re eating more frozen stuff.”

After waiting for hours to speak with an employee, she was told she needed to provide more documentation, as well as a written statement from her father clarifying that a birthday gift she’d received over Zelle was not a recurring payment.

Inside the Arizona Department of Economic Security, increased requirements have placed a strain on the employees charged with processing SNAP applications after 400 people were laid off in July. Part of Trump’s “beautiful bill” required states to keep their payment error rate below 6.6 percent or be forced to pay for a portion of SNAP benefits themselves. Arizona’s error rate was 8.8 percent in fiscal year 2024, and projected to be around 10 percent in fiscal year 2025. The state could face up to $208 million in costs if it doesn’t lower that rate this year.

Meanwhile, the Arizonans who are getting kicked off their benefits are turning to donations to survive. St. Mary’s Food Bank, the largest in the state, reported a 12 percent increase in demand across Arizona. Milton Liu, head of St. Mary’s, told NBC News that demand has already increased as much as 25 percent over the past year in some rural counties. He expected that number will only continue to grow.