On Saturday night, Donald Trump launched an unprovoked, illegal, and unconstitutional attack on Iran. But with it he proved one incontrovertible fact: The United States of America is not a democracy.

DRIVING THE NEWS: As we reported last week, an Economist/YouGov poll found that only 16% of Americans supported the U.S. getting involved militarily with Iran.

For a country that can’t agree on anything, that’s a stunning amount of consensus.

BUT BUT BUT: The enormous unpopularity of another, potentially endless war in the Middle East did little to dissuade our “leaders” that war should be avoided.

ZOOM OUT: What we saw—in real time—is what political scientists have been saying for years: public opinion has almost zero influence on our government because they’re beholden to monied elites.

THE PROOF: Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law professor and political reform advocate, has argued for years that the United States is no longer a democracy in any meaningful sense. Instead, he says we have a system of legalized corruption.

The numbers back him up. A Princeton study from 2014 found that public opinion has virtually zero influence on policy outcomes unless it aligns with elite or corporate interests.

And that’s why we’re at war with Iran today. Because the monied elites—for any number of reasons—wanted a war with Iran.

BOTTOM LINE: Whatever you call it, you can’t call it a democracy.

As Lessig has pointed out, if a choice is between two parties who are both funded by the same special interests, what kind of choice is that?

GO DEEPER: All the reasons why war with Iran is a terrible idea

As the U.S. waits for Iran’s retaliation, Trump is backtracking on a key campaign promise to stay out of forever wars. After years of mocking neocons for pushing regime change, Trump is now suggesting it himself—posting “MIGA” (Make Iran Great Again) while bombing the country. His own VP said just hours before that’s not the plan—but that didn’t stop Trump’s tweet. Full story from Axios.

Anti-genocide activist Mahmoud Khalil returned to New York after 104 days in ICE detention—then immediately joined protesters outside Columbia. He vowed to keep fighting for Palestinian freedom and called out the university for punishing students who dare say “Free Palestine.” Full story from The Guardian.

A federal judge ruled Sunday that Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man “mistakenly” sent to a concentration camp in El Salvador, should be freed before trial. She called the government’s case weak. But ICE plans to detain him anyway—proving once again that under Trump, due process is optional if you're an immigrant. Full story from AP.

Chevron and Exxon say climate lawsuits from states and cities are unconstitutional—because lying about global warming is just “participating in public debate.” The First Amendment, they argue, protects corporate disinformation too. Full story from The New York Times.

Last week we learned that Social Security is in more trouble than we thought. We asked, are you worried about losing Social Security benefits? The answer was clear.

M. Niece voted no and made a good point: “It would be career suicide for anyone reducing Social Security benefits. I am afraid that it will not keep up with inflation though.”

Melody voiced many people’s concern with her yes vote: “I barely make it each month so any reduction would cause me not to be able to pay all my bills each month which I imagine would happen to others and a domino effect would hurt the economy!”

Mcarpentierirn also had a question many people were asking: “I don’t understand why the rich billionaires don’t pay taxes & solve this problem! It’s absolutely cruel, morally wrong, shameful & disgusting.”

TODAY’S QUESTION: After Trump bombed Iran Saturday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for Trump’s impeachment. Do you think Trump should be impeached? Why or why not?

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While the country’s attention was turned towards Trump’s war on Iran, his administration was busy quietly making moves to kick a million people off Obamacare.

DRIVING THE NEWS: On Friday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (part of the Department of Health and Human Services) made a number of changes to the Affordable Care Act to make it harder to get coverage.

Specifically, they:

Together, the agency’s own projections say between 725,000 and 1.8 million people will lose coverage.

YES, AND: Under pressure from the public, many of these changes are currently temporary. But Republicans in Congress have been working to codify them as part of their “big, beautiful” bill that's now in the Senate.

BIG PICTURE: All of this is part of Republicans’ never-ending war on public healthcare—and with it, the working class.

To them, publicly-funded healthcare means higher taxes for the rich and big corporations and less profit for the insurance companies.

It looks like Trump is doing exactly what we feared: using an unnecessary war to distract attention from the never-ending class war that continuously screws over working people in this country.

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