The Midterms Sent a Message: End the Iran War, Release the Epstein Files, and Stop Pretending Trump Kept His Promise
The 2026 midterms punished Trump’s war, high prices, and broken America First promises. Democrats now control Congress. Will they act—or perform?
Keywords: 2026 midterms, Iran war, Epstein files, Donald Trump, Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ron DeSantis, gas prices, America First
The 2026 midterms were not a mysterious earthquake. They were a bill coming due.
Donald Trump sold himself as the man who would stop the forever wars, put America first, lower the cost of living, and break the machinery that treats ordinary Americans as fuel for somebody else’s agenda. Instead, Americans got another war in the Middle East, another executive-power argument, another loyalty test, and another round of political theater about transparency.
Then the voters answered.
According to the Associated Press, Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress. The AP described voters as deeply frustrated by high prices, the Iran war, and government corruption. That does not mean Democrats suddenly became the party of liberty. It means the governing party gave voters enough reasons to punish it.
That distinction matters. A protest vote is not a conversion. Democrats did not win a blank check. They inherited a very simple assignment: prove that all the things they shouted about during the campaign were more than campaign wallpaper.
I have been saying the war broke the promise
My position has not changed because a red team lost an election. I have opposed wars for decades. I opposed the Iraq disaster. I opposed the endless habit of turning every foreign crisis into an American obligation. I opposed presidents claiming that Congress is merely a decorative branch of government.
Trump’s America First, non-interventionist posture was one of the reasons I considered him preferable to the alternatives in 2024. I did not create my political beliefs around Donald Trump. He fit some of them better than the available alternatives. That was always conditional support, not a religious conversion.
The Iran war shattered that condition.
I wrote about that break in The Puppet Masters: Why Trump Is Cracking, where I argued that “America First” cannot mean America gets dragged into every foreign entanglement first. I wrote Trump’s Second Term Is a Libertarian Failure, documenting the war-powers fight, the debt, the tariffs, and the loyalty tests. I followed that with The Republican Party Shakeup Was Always Coming, because the Republican Party promised restraint and then acted surprised when voters noticed the missiles.
Even my more personal recent writing made the point plainly: I vehemently disagree with the Iran war, and Trump’s departure from his earlier non-interventionist promises makes it difficult to feel enthusiastic about him. That was not a sudden post-election mood. It was the position before the votes were counted.
Thomas Massie understood the constitutional problem. He introduced a bipartisan War Powers Resolution to prohibit unauthorized U.S. hostilities in Iran. Marjorie Taylor Greene understood the political problem. She asked why an American president who campaigned against foreign wars would lead his party into one.
I still stand with both of them. At this point, either Massie or Greene would be a better fit for president than Donald Trump—not because either is perfect, but because they have been willing to say “no” when the president’s own movement wanted obedience instead of principle.
Trump attacking people like them was revealing. A movement that claims to oppose the swamp should not treat dissent as treason. If the only acceptable Republican is the one who applauds the president, then “America First” has been reduced to “Trump first.” That is not constitutional government. That is fandom with a flag pin.
Yes, midterms usually punish the party in power
The Democrats should not confuse a normal historical headwind with a mandate from heaven.
The president’s party almost always loses ground in the midterms. Brookings found that the president’s party lost House ground in 20 of the 22 midterm elections from 1938 forward, with the unusual exceptions of 1998 and 2002. The American Presidency Project reports that from 1934 through 2018, the president’s party lost an average of 28 House seats and four Senate seats at midterm elections.
So yes: this happens constantly. The governing party overreaches, voters become unhappy, turnout changes, and the opposition party gets to cosplay as the adult in the room for two years.
But historical regularity does not make this result meaningless. It tells us what the Democrats have to prove. They now control both houses. They can pass bills. They can force hearings. They can use subpoenas. They can put their alleged priorities on the floor and make every member vote in public.
No more “we would do something if only we had power.” You have power now. Use it.
The Epstein files: the meme is already behind the news
The attached meme says Democrats can release the Epstein files, prosecute those involved, stop the war, and lower gas prices. The attitude is right: voters should demand action instead of excuses.
But the meme’s legislative premise is stale. Congress already passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November 2025 by a House vote of 427–1. President Trump signed it. The Department of Justice says it identified more than six million potentially responsive pages and published 3.5 million responsive pages in January 2026. The DOJ’s Epstein Library says it will be updated if additional documents are identified.
That means the question in 2026 is not whether Democrats can put a release bill to a vote. A release law already exists. The question is whether the new Democratic majorities will enforce the law, investigate incomplete compliance, protect victims without using “victim protection” as a magic eraser for embarrassing names, and make the Justice Department answer for what remains withheld.
Republicans were angry about the incomplete release too. Thomas Massie and bipartisan lawmakers introduced the Epstein Files Transparency Act II in July 2026, alleging that the Justice Department had not complied with the original law. So this is not a clean red-versus-blue issue. It is a transparency issue—and a test of whether either party believes its own slogans after the cameras leave.
Here is the challenge to the Democrats: stop jeering from the cheap seats. Open the files lawfully. Hold the hearings. Demand a document-by-document accounting. Publish the redaction rules. Refer actual evidence to prosecutors. Do not smear every person whose name appears in a contact book, flight log, or email, because association is not proof of a crime. But do not protect powerful people by pretending the public is too stupid to read.
And if Democrats refuse to act, I will have been right to be skeptical. I have even put money behind that skepticism on Polymarket. I am not claiming that my bet proves anything. It means I am willing to put my money where my mouth is: political parties routinely turn popular demands into fundraising slogans and then quietly discover procedural reasons not to deliver.
“Compared to what?” applies to oil too
Gas prices are high. That hurts. It hurts working people, small businesses, delivery drivers, families, and anybody who cannot simply teleport to work.
But Thomas Sowell’s question still applies: compared to what?
The cleanest comparison is not a campaign graphic. It is the Energy Information Administration’s daily Europe Brent spot-price series. Counting daily observations above $100 per barrel from January 20, 2021 through January 19, 2025 produces 115 days under Biden. Counting from January 20, 2025 through November 3, 2026 produces 96 days under Trump. That is fewer total days for Trump, but the time periods are not equal: Trump’s count covers less than two years, while Biden’s covers four.
Measured as a share of reported trading-day observations, Brent was above $100 on roughly 7.9% of the Biden-period observations and roughly 14.7% of the Trump-period observations available through November 3, 2026. So the honest conclusion is not that one president magically controls every barrel of oil. It is that the Trump period has had a much higher rate of $100-plus Brent days, concentrated around the Iran conflict.
The war is not the only variable in an oil market. OPEC decisions, global demand, sanctions, shipping risk, inventories, and production matter. But when a war closes or threatens major shipping routes and the president tells Americans that higher prices are an inexpensive price to pay, voters are entitled to answer: it is inexpensive for whom?
The same people who demanded that Americans blame Biden for every painful number at the pump do not get to declare economics a foreign conspiracy when the White House is Republican.
Democrats: prove you are serious
The Democrats now have a chance to embarrass every cynical prediction about them. End the Iran war. Use Congress’s war powers. Force a real vote. Demand a real exit plan. Stop pretending that endless escalation is “leadership.”
Enforce the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Do not turn it into a partisan prop. Do not protect Democrats, Republicans, donors, celebrities, bureaucrats, or anyone else. Release what the law requires, redact only what the law allows, protect victims, and prosecute actual crimes based on evidence.
Then address fuel prices honestly. You cannot end a war and promise instant cheap gasoline. You can stop making the supply shock worse. You can stop treating the public as an ATM for foreign-policy vanity. You can approve energy production, remove pointless barriers, and explain the tradeoffs instead of handing voters another cartoon.
If the Democrats do all of that, I will give them credit. If they do nothing, I will remind everyone that the party in power is usually very brave before it has to cast a vote.
Ron DeSantis was dead on
Ron DeSantis’s post-election speech in Florida was unusually candid. He called the result a “100-year-type political earthquake,” said it was not merely a normal bad off-year election, and warned Republicans that the balance of power had shifted significantly. He also pointed to the Iran war, gas prices, inflation, and Washington dysfunction as reasons Republican candidates were running into the wind.
He was dead on about the warning. The midterms were not just Democrats winning. They were Republicans being told that slogans do not cancel consequences.
DeSantis also warned that Republicans may not recover quickly. That is possible. But recovery should not mean better branding for the same broken promises. It should mean fewer foreign wars, more constitutional restraint, less worship of one politician, and a return to the simple idea that the government exists to serve the people who fund it.
The voters have spoken. Now let’s see whether the Democrats can do more than celebrate the microphone.
Sources and evidence
- Associated Press: Democrats win the House and Senate
- Brookings: What history tells us about midterm elections
- American Presidency Project: midterm seat changes
- EIA: Europe Brent spot price daily history
- House Clerk: Epstein Files Transparency Act vote, 427–1
- DOJ: Epstein Files Transparency Act production
- DOJ Epstein Library
- Thomas Massie: Epstein Files Transparency Act II
- Thomas Massie: Iran War Powers Resolution
- ClickOrlando: DeSantis after the 2026 midterms
- Disruptarian: The Puppet Masters
- Disruptarian: Trump’s Second Term Is a Libertarian Failure
- Disruptarian: The Republican Party Shakeup Was Always Coming
- Disruptarian: Parental Alienation, Accusations, and the Test of Character
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