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Trump’s chaotic war is bankrupting America

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by Max Burns, opinion contributor - 05/07/26 9:00 AM ET

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by Max Burns, opinion contributor - 05/07/26 9:00 AM ET

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Does anyone in America know what President Trump is doing in the Strait of Hormuz? Does Trump himself know?

On Sunday, he boldly announced “Project Freedom,” his scheme to escort commercial ships through the shuttered strait. He then swiftly reversed course just two days later, declaring that the strait would remain closed, even as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was selling Project Freedom to the press. As Hegseth touted a plan that no longer existed, Trump again changed his timeline for ending his increasingly unpopular war in Iran.

Trump’s impulsive and contradictory actions in Iran have confounded his generals, his Cabinet and the public since the war began 10 weeks ago. Trump is now so bogged down that he is confounding himself, too. It is time for Congress to exert some constitutional authority and wrap this debacle up before regular Americans endure even more financial suffering.

Trump has clearly lost the plot of what has become a staggeringly expensive conflict without any clear strategic goal. In fact, the only measurable result of Trump’s Iran strikes has been a spike in the cost of gasoline by more than 50 percent since March. The cost of jet fuel rose so much so quickly that Spirit Airlines had no choice but to declare bankruptcy and liquidate 17,000 previously well-paying American jobs.

“For the first time in my life, I have no idea how to face what comes next,” former Spirit Airlines employee Jorge Luis Camacho lamented in a GoFundMe fundraiser, posted shortly after the company shuttered. “Bills have to be paid, and financially, I have nothing.”

Camacho and his former Spirit coworkers will have a hard time finding new work in an economy battered by the Iran war. A Goldman Sachs report published in March estimated that Trump’s war is costing the U.S. economy more than 10,000 jobs each month, with losses concentrated in the leisure and hospitality industries, retail and manufacturing. The economic uncertainty wrought by Trump’s war is now the most potent job-killer in the country.

Indeed, the Iran War may well be remembered for little else besides the rolling job losses and financial hardship it inflicted on working-class Americans who were already grappling with rising consumer prices. Bank of America reports that credit card spending has surged roughly 4.3 percent in March, the most in more than three years, as consumers pile on debt to pay for basic necessities like gasoline. Unsurprisingly, consumer confidence has collapsed to the lowest level ever recorded as most Americans prepare for the worst.

Then there’s the day-to-day expense of running a war without end. The conflict has drained more than $72 billion in taxpayer funds at a time when Republican leaders say there simply isn’t any cash available to extend healthcare subsidies for the 22 million Americans facing skyrocketing premiums. And that’s before Trump heads to Capitol Hill with hat in hand to ask for $80 billion to $100 billion more in war funding.

At some point, enough has to be enough, even for the spineless MAGA gophers currently clogging up the Congress.

It appears at least a few Republicans are beginning to realize how economically (and politically) disastrous Trump’s war is shaping up to be. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) recently pushed for a War Powers Act vote in the Senate; her moment of courage was dampened by Republican leader John Thune flatly ignoring the request. That hasn’t stopped Murkowski from building support for the vote from Republicans including Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), John Curtis (R-Utah) and Todd Young (R-Ind.).

If Murkowski and her colleagues are trying their best to steer their party away from an electoral disaster, they’ll still likely run headlong into House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) absolute resistance to anything that could be viewed as Trump criticism. Johnson has so far resisted calls to rein in Trump’s war powers, even as the most recent Ipsos poll found a growing majority of Americans souring on the war.

Republicans are currently caught in the trap of defending a war their own leader doesn’t seem to understand — and just like Hegseth this week, they increasingly finding themselves defending policies, only to discover that Trump has already abandoned them and reversed course.

How many times will Trump’s enablers allow themselves to look like fools in order to avoid acknowledging that this war is a rolling economic disaster? How many times will they force the Ame