The war in Iran is small change compared to Trump's active war on US elections

He's backed into a corner with few options and that makes him very dangerous.

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There’s no escaping the ongoing illegal war with Iran; the hole just gets deeper as Trump continues to dig deeper with the daily vomiting of his lies aimed at preventing the markets from collapsing. The problem he has is that controlling the narrative during a war is all but impossible, because information will leak. For example, in a report by Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali, Jonathan Landay and Erin Banco from Reuters on March 27th, sources, on a guarantee of anonymity, reported :

The United States can only determine with certainty that it has destroyed about a third of Iran's vast missile arsenal as the U.S. and Israeli war on the country ​nears its one-month mark, according to five people familiar with the U.S. intelligence.

The obvious question, if this is correct, is why on earth would Trump be considering putting US boots on the ground on small islands in the Straight of Hormuz, as he put it to the Financial Times, to ‘Take their oil’? Surely that’s just a bloodbath waiting to happen? The problem with anything Trump does is that he’s a pathological liar, so people find themselves uninformed simply because he can’t be seen to be the loser he is fast becoming in this conflict.

Image - Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

I found it deeply disturbing but very telling that Karolyin’ Leavitt stepped up with a beaming smile to the podium with the most bizarre statement :

‘Did you hear our “amen” in there? We just said a little loud prayer as a team. In this Holy Week, President Trump and the First Lady are joining in prayer with Christians celebrating the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.’

She then moved swiftly to segue into :

With respect to the ongoing major combat operations in Iran, Operation Epic Fury is moving forward successfully and according to plan. With each passing day, the United States military is increasing its advantage over the Iranian terrorist regime.

In the blink of an eye and with no expression of Christian mercy or humility, she broke the ninth commandment, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour" (Exodus 20:16).

She continued:

‘The United States is conducting more intense targeted strikes with devastating combat power with each passing day’

The commandments state hubris, or “haughty spirit”, is explicitly warned against, with Proverbs 16:18 stating, "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall" I fear no more will this prove to be true than in this moment. The key takeaway is not Christian spirit and humility during Holy Week, but the celebration of a Holy War of choice against an Islamist enemy. Leavitt’s words were delivered as Trump had stated:

“If a deal to end the war isn’t reached “shortly” and the Strait of Hormuz , where much oil passes via tankers, is not immediately reopened, “we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched.’”

To be absolutely clear, this would be a ‘war crime’. The 1949 Geneva Conventions on humanitarian conduct in war prohibit attacks on sites considered essential for ‌civilians:

"In no event shall actions against these objects be taken which may be expected to leave the civilian population with such inadequate food or water as to cause its starvation or force its movement."

[They explicitly prohibit attacks on] "objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production ​of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works..."

This is yet another example of Trump’s utter disregard for human life. He has absolutely no interest in the welfare of US troops or the Iranian people. He is merely attempting to protect a fantasy legacy, one that already sees him as a thug who has turned America into a Pariah state. Of course, none of that matters to him; he’s intoxicated with the perceived power he holds. The true test will come when he loses power or is forced to flee the country, which is not beyond the bounds of possibility if things continue to decline as they are.

Lest we forget, this is happening against a backdrop of falling poll numbers and deep unpopularity over his entire policy agenda. As a result, Trump is taking desperate measures to pass the ‘Save America Act’. From the beginning of his rule, he has ignored the structures of government established by the Founding Fathers, choosing instead to rule by fiat, primarily through executive action. His only engagement with the legislative process has been through his ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, which was deliberately designed to be a full-term legislative agenda in one bite.

Illustration by Leah Abucayan/CNN/Getty

Those pulling the strings knew his agenda would not survive a full term, so they wanted to ensure the tax-cut elements were codified before the shit hit the fan. Trump now finds himself facing a day of reckoning for his war on the American people, and he’s staring at the possibility of being forced to own his crimes and his corrupt actions. In his mind, that can’t be allowed to happen, and that’s what makes the months ahead dangerous.

70 million Americans handed him the most powerful office on earth, and the Supreme Court effectively declared him a political deity, granting him ‘total immunity’ as he sees it. There is no more dangerous cocktail than a malignant narcissist who believes he is above the law, and rest assured, he’s about to put the electoral system to either the test or to the sword.

He’s under increasing pressure on two fronts. One, to pass the Save America Act, and two, to trash the filibuster. If either attempt is successful, the entire electoral landscape might change, allowing Republicans to control the voter pool. If the filibuster is killed, then the stakes are really raised, as it will give Republicans a license to attempt to legislate Democrats out of the democratic process altogether. The danger, though, is that if they then can’t overcome a blue wave in November, they have no protection from the filibuster; it’s game over. A danger John Thune, the Republican leader in the Senate, is very awake to.

Image - Lindsey Bailey/Axios. Photo: MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images

The pressure from Trump will become relentless as the war's impact makes him ever more unpopular. He sees the Save America Act as a get-out-of-jail-free card to prevent a catastrophic loss in November. Yesterday, saw him introduce yet another voter suppression proclamation via executive order to limit mail-in voting. As reported by Patrick Marley and Cleve R. Wootson Jr. in a piece in the Washington Post on March 31st 2026. They note:

The order directs the U.S. Postal Service to send ballots only to voters who appear on a list of citizens to be compiled by the Department of Homeland Security with the assistance of the Social Security Administration. The order also specifies what types of secure envelopes are to be used for mail ballots.

Elections experts called the order legally questionable and noted that courts blocked the major provisions of an executive order on elections he signed last year.

This just marks the beginning of a judicial arms race to erect roadblocks to Americans’ constitutional right to vote. I believe we are going to see various attempts to use executive action to redefine the voter pool. Trump and his acolytes understand they can throw sand in the electoral engine with a sustained attack on the system, and you had better believe they will get inventive.

Everyone should take the time to read this important piece from FactCheck.org about how the legislative text of the bill is phrased to be deliberately ambiguous, which has been the hallmark of many of Trump’s Executive Orders. The piece by Lori Robertson is entitled:

Competing Claims on SAVE America Act Disenfranchising Voters

provides you with the information you need to make your own judgment about the threat to voter rights. The claim is “As many as 21 million could be stopped from voting” As you would expect, Republicans refute the claim. Sen John Cornyn stated:

“[The] argument that American citizens would be denied the opportunity to vote is patently false. Thirty-eight states, including states like Georgia and Rhode Island, currently represented by Democrats, require voter ID. Are those states suppressing the vote? Is the minority leader suggesting that 38 out of our 50 states are actively engaged in voter suppression? Well, that is preposterous on its face.”

The major problem with this legislation is that Republicans are attempting to overlay federal requirements over a patchwork of state legislation, some of which already has voter ID baked into state law. The most dangerous aspect of the bill is that it has deliberately injected ambiguity into the Act’s notification requirements for those purged from the electoral roll. On the surface, the bill appears to adhere to notification requirements. Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Centre for Constitutional Studies, noted the ambiguity surrounding alternative methods of citizenship verification.

Walter Olson - Robert A. Levy Centre for Constitutional Studies

The clear aim here is to make it much easier to deny a vote based on a subjective assessment rather than a clear set of evidence-based federal guidelines. The critical point that Olson made was:

“In short, we aren’t going to find out what the bill does on many key questions until after we pass it into law and the EAC begins issuing guidance. One of the reasons I am critical of the bill is that I don’t believe we should be asked to take it on faith that the EAC will issue practical guidance in good faith. If the EAC is going to issue guidance that causes an uproar because it sets requirements many legitimate voters cannot meet, we should know that now, not later.”

The reporting notes:

There are a couple of provisions regarding purging voters. The first requires states to use the DHS system “for the purposes of identifying individuals who are not citizens of the United States and taking the necessary steps to remove such individuals who are not citizens from the official list, after notice is given to such individuals and such individuals are given the opportunity to provide documentary proof of United States citizenship.” As we’ve explained, the DHS system has been shown to have flaws and has wrongly identified people as being noncitizens.

The use of the DHS system is a major red flag; it itself facilitates government interference in determining who is verified as a US citizen. The key point, however, is that this WOULD trigger a notification to the voter that they have been flagged for removal from the voter roll. Whether you have faith that the notification won’t go mysteriously missing in the mail is a separate issue.

The real concern comes from a section of the bill that states:

“A State shall remove an individual who is not a citizen of the United States from the official list of eligible voters for elections for Federal office held in the State at any time upon receipt of documentation or verified information that a registrant is not a United States citizen.”

This provision says NOTHING about providing notification of such removals. This could result in a voter turning up to vote and being denied their vote, with no remedy available. Olson stated:

“So far as I can tell, this means that anyone, including the federal government or some private person or group, can send ‘documentation or verified information’ to a state that a certain person, or a list of persons, on its voter rolls are not U.S. citizens. The state then ‘shall’ remove them,” Olson said. “So long as this is not being done by the method carved out for the SAVE database and its intersection with state voter rolls in federal possession, I don’t see where the bill provides any assurance of notification.”

I know for a fact from previous research that Republicans are using AI to scrape data from electoral rolls to create target lists to challenge votes, which DID happen in 2024 to disqualify legitimate votes cast. The bill is designed to leave the door open to organisations like this to submit lists of voters for removal, which could go unchallenged by sympathetic red states. These voters would receive no notification and not realise they had been removed until they attempted to cast their vote.

This legislation is, I believe, a vehicle for targeting and excluding voters. We already know about the problems married women will face, but the problem extends way beyond that demographic. It is my belief that if the act is passed, Republicans already have lists of voters to target beyond married women, and mass purges will follow. It’s pretty clear there will be massive delays in obtaining the relevant documentation. Even setting this aside, it is unquestionably a poll tax, which, in itself, makes it unconstitutional. I believe it represents the biggest voter suppression attempt in modern American history. Don’t be surprised if voters aren’t asked soon to count the bubbles in a bar of soap or the number of jellybeans in a jar.

I actually think it is imperative to have trained international election monitors on the ground, as is required for African countries plagued by state-sponsored election interference. I’m sure the UN would be more than happy to facilitate it.

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