Current Affairs Of Pakistan & World: War’s peril for Trump

War’s peril for Trump — and the world

May 18, 2026

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THE CATCH-UP

WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 11: U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks at a 'Rose Garden Club' dinner for National Police Week in the Rose Garden at the White House on May 11, 2026 in Washington, DC. Trump hosted leaders of various law enforcement organizations in honor of officers fallen in the line of duty. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump delivers remarks on May 11 in Washington, DC. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

IRAN FALLOUT: As President Donald Trump this week considers a return to bombing in the U.S.-Israel war with Iran — or takes steps toward a possible peace deal — the conflict’s political peril for Republicans keeps widening. So does the tangible fallout around the globe.

After Trump’s weekend threats seeking to pressure Iran into concessions, an Iranian state news agency claimed that the U.S. had put forth an offer for temporary sanctions relief on Iranian oil, per Bloomberg. If true (the Trump administration hasn’t confirmed), that could indicate some movement toward a negotiated agreement. Iran said it had handed over its latest proposal, via Pakistan, today. But Iran’s other demands are much tougher pills for the U.S. to swallow — as are Washington’s for Tehran. And Trump is reportedly due back in the Situation Room tomorrow to go over military options.

Trump trained his ire on the press instead today, postulating on Truth Social that even a total Iranian surrender would be still reported in the mainstream media as “a Masterful and Brilliant Victory” by Iran.

But the war is dragging Trump down with much of the American public beyond his GOP base, according to the latest NYT/Siena poll. Sixty-four percent of voters say going to war was the wrong decision, more than double the share who think it was right. Trump is at 31 percent approval for his handling of the war and 37 percent overall job approval. And the president has especially taken a hit on the economy amid war-fueled price increases, with pessimism about economic conditions leaping back up to Joe Biden-era levels. For the first time in his second term, Trump’s approval rating in the RealClearPolitics average has slipped below 40 percent.

The number really going viral today: Democrats have now opened up a 10-point lead on the generic congressional ballot, 50 percent to 39 percent (with rounding), per NYT/Siena, despite Democrats’ enduring and historically anomalous unpopularity.

But Trump may be buoyed by support for the war from Republican voters, who overall back the continuation of the fight. Nearly three-quarters say they expect the war to take out Iran’s nuclear program. Indeed, halting Tehran’s drive toward a nuclear weapon remains a key motivator for Trump and his party, even though that remains a difficult and distant goal.

And it’s not just Republicans: Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) told Semafor’s Burgess Everett that he’s “pretty much locked and loaded” in support of the war because stopping a nuclear Iran is just too important. That will make it all the more difficult for a war powers resolution to pass the Senate, as last week made clear.

Beyond the U.S. — and beyond politics — fallout from the war is colliding with U.S. foreign aid cuts to produce humanitarian devastation in some of the world’s poorest places. A brutal dispatch by NYT’s Peter Goodman from Somalia finds that the Iran war has made food and fuel prices skyrocket in communities already shocked by drought and the dismantling of USAID, which cushioned the blow for much of the world when the Ukraine war began. The World Food Program says the Iran war could push an additional 45 million people into acute hunger. And with people already dying, the situation looks set to get much worse over the summer.

“I’ve been doing this work a long time but nothing prepared me for what I saw” in Somalia, Goodman wrote. Finbarr O’Reilly has pulverizing photos of malnourished children in the story.

The end of USAID and other countries’ foreign aid cuts are also hitting home at the U.N.’s refugee agency, which said it will now have to make even deeper layoffs despite rising levels of displacement, Reuters’ Olivia Le Poidevin scooped.

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8 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

1. WEAPONIZATION WATCH: DOJ officially announced it’s creating a $1.776 (get it?) billion fund to compensate Trump allies who claim they were victims of government “weaponization” after he moved to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, per POLITICO’s Josh Gerstein and Danny Nguyen. The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” is part of the settlement over Trump’s leaked tax returns by government contractor Charles Littlejohn. Democrats pounced on it as a corrupt “slush fund.” The legal gambit was “an apparent effort to skirt oversight by the judge in the case,” NYT’s Andrew Duehren and colleagues write, as Trump “essentially freed his hand to reach a deal with administration officials without any judicial oversight.”

2. TRAIL MIX: Senate Majority PAC announced its initial TV ad reservations in New Hampshire and Georgia: $10.2 million to back Rep. Chris Pappas’ (D-N.H.) Senate bid, per WMUR 9’s Adam Sexton, and $20 million to shore up Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), per The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein and colleagues.

California dreamin’: Democrats hoped that their California gerrymander would flip Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-Calif.) seat to help take back the House. But now the race isn’t looking like such a slam dunk, POLITICO’s Ben Fox reports, as Dems have a crowded field but Republican Jim Desmond has emerged as a “credible contender.”

Under the radar: “DraftKings, Meta, AI Firms Have a New Election Playbook: Flood State-Level Races With Cash,” by Bloomberg’s Emily Birnbaum: “The companies behind the sports gambling platforms FanDuel, DraftKings and Fanatics Sportsbook poured $41 million into a new super PAC to spend on state-level candidates across the country.” That includes $2.2 million in attack ads just against one Alabama state Senate candidate.

3. DON’T FORGET ABOUT GREENLAND: Though it’s fallen out of the headlines, negotiators from the U.S., Greenland and Denmark have been engaging in confidential conversations for the last four months following Trump’s persistent push to annex Greenland, NYT’s Jeffrey Gettleman and colleagues report. U.S. negotiators have aimed to ensure American troops remain in Greenland indefinitely and called for U.S. military expansion — along with Washington having a say in investment deals. Many of these ideas are widely objected to by Greenlanders and Danes, who worry “that they amount to a major imposition on their sovereignty.”

4. RECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES: Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said to colleagues he will not vote for the GOP’s immigration enforcement reconciliation bill, as it currently stands, which is set to hit the Senate floor Thursday, Axios’ Hans Nichols scooped. That could make the vote margin very tight, as multiple other senators have raised concerns about funding that includes the White House ballroom.

More immigration files: A new Brookings Institution analysis estimates that over 100,000 children have been separated from their parents during the second Trump administration, way more than in his first term, NYT’s Miriam Jordan and Jeff Adelson report. Roughly three-quarters of the kids are likely U.S. citizens. DHS says deported parents are given the option to take their children with them, which some immigrants have said isn’t true.

For your radar: “Humanitarian parole denied for deported parents of U.S. citizen girl with rare brain tumor,” by NBC’s Nicole Acevedo

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5. SCOTUS WATCH: “Trump’s MAGA Supreme Court lawyer breaks tradition, but the justices embrace it,” by CNN’s Joan Biskupic: “Solicitor General D. John Sauer has been pushing the boundaries of the law at the Supreme Court … Sauer, whose hard-hitting positions and uncompromising manner might have turned off the justices of even a decade ago, has been spared the kind of humiliating questions that Chief Justice John Roberts sometimes aimed at the Obama administration solicitor general team. His hyperbole goes unchecked. And he has largely escaped the admonishment that predecessors as solicitor general received when they changed the government’s position.”

6. IN THE DOGE HOUSE: HHS and other agencies have stymied the Government Accountability Office as it investigates DOGE’s access to sensitive information, WaPo’s Meryl Kornfield reports. “The agencies’ refusals to provide information have raised concerns among Democrats about how thorough the ongoing reviews of DOGE will be, the staffers said.” But the Trump White House has grown skeptical of the nonpartisan watchdog, and the administration has tried to slow-walk its probes.

7. MAHA MEGATREND: “US states reject anti-vaccine bills as public health groups fight MAHA,” by Reuters’ Leah Douglas: “The failures show a limit to the political power of the MAHA coalition groups that had set out this year to pass ‌laws against mandatory vaccinations in at least 10 states. … Vaccine advocates used polling data and personal appeals to convince lawmakers in Republican-controlled states such as West Virginia, Louisiana and Florida that their constituents support vaccination and that the MAHA-backed bills posed a threat to public health.”

8. MEDIAWATCH: In some fairly unusual public media criticism by a sitting federal judge, Roy Altman penned a detailed Free Press op-ed slamming the reporting by NYT’s Nicholas Kristof on Palestinians being raped by Israeli prison guards. Altman declared Kristof’s reporting to comprise factually wrong “blood libels,” saying it “violates the fundamental rules of fairness and due process that have, for centuries, served as the bulwark of our democracy.” The piece has become a lightning rod for conservatives and pro-Israel advocates, while the Times has stood firmly behind the veracity of its reporting. Altman, a Trump appointee, is overseeing Trump’s $10 billion libel lawsuit against the BBC.

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TALK OF THE TOWN

WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE WHCD — The White House Correspondents’ Dinner still hasn’t been rescheduled after being interrupted by last month’s frightening shooting, and it’s not clear whether/how it will be, AP’s Jocelyn Noveck reports. President Donald Trump’s declaration that it would take place within a month seems unlikely to be borne out. White House Correspondents’ Association board members are looking at options for a smaller dinner in a new location. But some journalists think the whole thing should just be scrapped.

PLAYBOOK METRO SECTION — WMATA is eyeing a potential new fast bus route with a coincidentally Trump-friendly color palette. The Gold Line would run from Rosslyn (convenient for POLITICO employees) through Georgetown all the way to Benning Road, though the first phase would just cover Union Station to the new Commanders stadium. And Metro general manager Randy Clarke has a pitch for the Trump administration on working together “to build faster,” he told Axios’ Cuneyt Dil on the “Dream City Podcast.”

OUT AND ABOUT — SPOTTED at a kickoff reception for Foreign Policy for America’s annual leadership summit, held last night at La Vie: Reps. Gabe Amo (D-R.I.), Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) and Jason Crow (D-Colo.), Andrew Albertson, Sarah Margon, Maher Bitar, Nelson Cunningham, Sahar Hafeez, Ed Reilly, Tod Sedgwick and Missy Ryan.

MEDIA MOVE — Michelle Baruchman is now a politics reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer. She previously worked at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

TRANSITION — Christopher Kang will be the next executive director of the Coalition on Human Needs. He is a co-founder of Demand Justice and an Obama White House alum.

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