The Iran war's second front is at home

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The Iran war’s second front is at home
The president's war is the right's long-awaited excuse to gut education, health care and the social safety net

By Chauncey DeVega
Senior Writer
Published April 7, 2026 6:30AM (EDT)


(Salon) Donald Trump, who claims to be a Christian, started Easter with a profane threat. “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” he posted on his Truth Social platform. “There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F***kin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

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The president’s threats are not dark jokes or mere impulses. They are very real and must be taken seriously. But our focus on them can serve to obscure an important point: Trump is burning the American people’s money to pay for his expanding war against Iran. His administration’s militarism is making the American people less safe while systematically undermining the country’s economy, democracy and overall quality of life.

A gangster nation is rarely prosperous — at least for the average person. According to estimates, the war against Iran costs more than $1 billion a day, with a total cost of at least $50 billion so far. The Pentagon has already requested over $200 billion in additional funding from Congress. But last week, the Trump administration went even further, submitting an overall budget request totaling $1.5 trillion for the military in 2027. The amount represents an increase of $500 billion from its 2026 authorization, with America already spending more on national defense than the next 9 to 10 nations combined, including Russia and China.

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His proposed budget is the next step in a decades-long project by the American right to fundamentally change the relationship between the American people and their government.

As historian Nancy MacLean details in her book “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America,” right-wing libertarians from Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek and James Buchanan to the Koch brothers have believed that the federal government’s only responsibilities are national defense, law enforcement, the courts and creating a structure that further concentrates wealth and power among the elite. These ideas, once relegated to the party’s fringes, are now mainstream GOP ideology. ......................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/04/07/the-iran-wars-second-front-is-at-home/