Beyond Trump

Beyond Trump’s Defeat: The Cost of War and Unchecked Presidential Power

Last Tuesday’s election was a stunning defeat for President Donald Trump. Democrats won both houses of Congress, including Senate races in states they haven’t won in generations. Americans went to the polls angry about rising prices, government corruption, rising authoritarianism, and a war with Iran they never wanted. Those frustrations are deeply connected. But this moment can, and should, be an opportunity to do more than move beyond President Trump and his movement. It’s an opportunity for people across the country to question how we got here, and what needs to change about American power.

Already, the administration responsible for the war are trying to distance themselves from it. Vice President JD Vance is blaming the Iran war for the Republican defeat. On Election Day President Trump himself went on Fox News to declare he’s planning to end military aid to Israel, though he openly admitted that his motivation for making the announcement was to deny his opponents a “bad talking point.” Republicans seem to be coalescing around a scapegoat in Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, in a move reminiscent to George W Bush’s firing of Donald Rumsfeld after the midterm disaster of 2006. A vote for Hegseth’s impeachment may come as early as next week, if he isn’t forced out sooner.

This kind of double-talk is nothing new from this administration. Trump ran against disastrous wars of choice. Then he started a new one. It’s no surprise that now he’s talking about peace again. But this is about much more than Donald Trump’s hypocrisy.

If Trump disappeared tomorrow, the Office of the Presidency would still have the dangerous power to start wars without any legal authority to do so. American military power would still be deployed around the world, threatening other nations. Paramilitary forces like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol would still be terrorizing American cities in violation of US law. The American People registered their disapproval of Trumpism at the ballot box. Will they now go further and demand that the powers be stripped from the presidency, or will they just hand them to someone else?

Nearly 60 years ago, Dr Martin Luther King Jr. asked Americans a similar question in his speech at Riverside Church in New York City, “Beyond Vietnam.” King didn’t just want to end that war. He wanted the American People to confront the racism, extreme materialism, and militarism that made it possible.

King had seen hope in President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. As Vietnam escalated, he watched the effort to help poor Americans get pushed aside. The war consumed the money, attention, and political will that those programs needed to succeed. King came to see Vietnam as an enemy of poor people here at home, not only of the people being killed overseas.

President Trump returned to the White House promising to bring prices down. Instead, his war with Iran has made everything more expensive. The price of gasoline, diesel fuel, groceries, everything from fertilizer to electronics, has skyrocketed. Mortgage rates and other borrowing costs are higher than they were before the war. Businesses struggling to predict energy prices and interest rates have a harder time deciding whether to expand or hire. They put off opening a new location, buying equipment, or taking a chance on another employee. Those decisions affect real jobs and make planning a future harder for families, too.

And Americans know it. They were promised economic relief. Now they’re paying for a war they did not ask for.

Now the same administration that brought us the war in Iran is asking to spend even more tax dollars on the military. The United States spent about $954 billion on its military in 2025. Now Trump is proposing $1.5 trillion in defense funding for 2027, while seeking cuts to domestic programs. After seeing what this administration has done with a near trillion dollar war budget, why would anyone believe that giving it $500 billion more will make life better for Americans?

This isn’t a problem Trump invented. The United States helped overthrow Iran’s prime minister in 1953. It fought in Vietnam, invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, and supplied the weapons Israel used to destroy of Gaza. It’s undermined democracy in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, repeatedly backing dictatorships and interfering with other countries’ governments. Republicans and Democrats have both taken part.