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"This is some of the most insane, tone-deaf messaging ever from a political party," said one Democratic strategist.
A Republican candidate for the US Senate thinks Americans should be "patriots" by driving less during President Donald Trump's unprovoked and unconstitutional war against Iran.
Michele Tafoya, a right-wing media personality running for an open US Senate seat in Minnesota, acknowledged during a Thursday interview on local radio station KWAM that the Iran war was causing painful spikes in gas prices, while encouraging US drivers to suck it up in the name of helping Trump succeed.
"I know it's frustrating, and I know it's hard for people," Tafoya said. "It used to be during past wars, especially World War II, Americans got behind our service men and women, and we did little things to show our support for them. We collected metal, we recycled stuff, aluminum, so that we could help in the war effort. I think right now, at least just keeping a stiff upper lip, maybe you take one less trip to Starbucks, so that gas goes a little further, until this thing is over."
Oh my god.
On the radio, NRSC-endorsed Michele Tafoya says that gas prices are spiking because of the Iran war that she supports and that people should “take one less trip to Starbuck’s” and to “just try to be patriots” about it.#mnsen pic.twitter.com/GOvkgZTqV7
— danny (@dabbs346) March 19, 2026
Tafoya then told Americans to "try to be patriots" about a war that was started early on a Saturday morning with no approval from the US Congress.
"Whether you agree with it or not, we're there," she concluded. "And we've got to support our men and women in uniform. That's a big one."
Fred Wellman, a Democrat running for the US House of Representatives in Missouri, said that Tafoya's comments made her look incredibly out of touch.
"Working people can’t get to their second job and pay for gas," Wellman wrote in a social media post. "Uber drivers are losing money doing the job. Small business are in the red for overhead. Prices are spiking because of insane diesel fuel costs. But when you’re a rich lady it’s patriotic to skip coffee. The other 80% wonder how they will eat at all."
Democratic strategist Matt McDermott expressed shock that Tafoya thought it would be a good idea to tell Americans to drive less to support a war that polls show is historically unpopular.
"The average person scrolling social media for the past few weeks has to be thinking that Republicans have absolutely lost their minds," McDermott wrote. "This is some of the most insane, tone-deaf messaging ever from a political party."
“At a time of extreme and growing inequality," said one critic, "today’s proposals will drain lending away from Main Street families’ needs and priorities and further enrich the already wealthy on Wall Street."
The Trump administration and Federal Reserve unveiled proposals Thursday that would significantly reduce capital requirements for the largest banks in the United States, potentially setting the stage for another financial industry collapse as the US-Israeli war on Iran destabilizes the global economy and jacks up prices for consumers.
Under the new rules proposed by the Fed, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, large banks would have to hold nearly 5% less capital on average. The advocacy organization Better Markets noted that the proposals—combined with other deregulatory actions taken by the Trump administration and the Fed over the past year—would return Wall Street banks' capital requirements "to the irresponsibly low 2007 levels they had just before the 2008 crash."
“At a time of extreme and growing inequality, when tens of millions of Americans are struggling to pay their bills, today’s proposals will drain lending away from Main Street families’ needs and priorities and further enrich the already wealthy on Wall Street and the top 10% of Americans they focus on serving," Dennis Kelleher, the president of Better Markets, said in a statement. "The banking agencies’ proposals to loosen capital rules are a victory for Wall Street lobbying, and claims to the contrary are nothing more than an attempt to mislead the American people."
Fed Gov. Michael Barr, who was nominated by former President Joe Biden, was the central bank board's lone dissenting voice against the new rules, a product of years of aggressive Wall Street lobbying for less stringent regulations in the wake of the Great Recession.
"Today's proposals, if adopted, would harm the resilience of banks and the US financial system," Barr warned in a statement. "There are suggestions that liquidity requirements could also be reduced. Additionally, Federal Reserve supervisory staff have been cut by over 30%, and supervisory practices have been weakened. Banking is built on trust. I worry greatly that these actions are rapidly eroding that trust."
The new deregulatory package, which will be subject to a 90-day public comment period before it's finalized, comes as President Donald Trump is waging an expensive and deadly war on Iran with no end in sight and attacking social programs at home, from Medicaid to nutrition assistance.
“With private credit markets cratering, AI transforming the workforce, and Trump’s Iran war threatening the world economy, we need healthy, resilient, well-capitalized banks," said Bartlett Naylor, an economist for the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. "Lessons learned after millions lost their jobs, homes, and savings following the 2008 megabank crash must not be ignored."
"Trump’s bank regulators propose to tear at the already tissue-thin layer of solvency levels at the nation’s banks," said Naylor. "Lowering solvency standards won’t generate more loans; it will only send banks closer to failure."
Matt Stoller, an anti-monopoly researcher and author of the BIG newsletter, wrote that the juxtaposition of a quagmire in Iran, Wall Street deregulation, and millions of Americans losing health insurance "tells the story" of the Trump administration.
Today's WSJ front page tells the story of the Trump admin.
#1: Hegseth Says ‘No Time Set’ on Ending Operations in Iran
#2: U.S. Regulators Propose More Lenient Capital Rules for Big Banks
#3: Millions of Americans Are Going Uninsured Following Expiration of ACA Subsidies pic.twitter.com/26jKsQuNc4
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) March 19, 2026
The effort to curb banks' capital requirements was spearheaded by Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman, a Trump appointee whose nomination last year was criticized by watchdogs as a "gift to the banking industry."
Kelleher of Better Markets said Thursday that "such counterproductive, shortsighted, and wrongheaded rulemaking isn’t a surprise given that the interests of Wall Street’s biggest banks are driving the priorities at the banking agencies, rather than facts, merit, and the public interest."
"The worst is at the Federal Reserve, where the senior regulatory staff comes from Wall Street’s top DC lobbyist (the Bank Policy Institute), Goldman Sachs, and one of Wall Street’s top law firms (a former partner is now the director responsible for supervising and regulating his recent Wall Street clients)," Kelleher observed. "That’s why mindless deregulation, especially for the biggest Wall Street banks, is at the top of the agenda, just as it was in the years before the 2008 crash."
"For the 22 million Americans whose premiums have doubled, and the millions more who stand to lose coverage, a $56 discount on a fertility drug is not 'immediate relief.'"
US President Donald Trump launched TrumpRx last month with a bold promise to the American public: "dramatically lower prices on dozens of common, high-cost, brand-name prescription drugs."
But an analysis released Tuesday by the Center for American Progress (CAP) found that of the 54 medications listed on TrumpRx.gov as of March 16, "exactly one" drug—the fertility medication Cetrotide—is available at a "genuinely new lower price" not available elsewhere.
The CAP analysis emphasized that TrumpRx—touted by the administration as a path to "immediate relief" for consumers in the country with the highest drug prices in the world—is extremely limited by design, listing just 0.2% of all federally approved medications in the US.
Additionally, the terms that site users must accept before gaining access to coupons for discounted prices state that beneficiaries cannot be "enrolled in insurance from any government, state, or federally funded medical or prescription benefit programs."
Patients also must have a prescription to use TrumpRx for discounts. "According to a KFF analysis," CAP noted, "nearly half (46.6%) of uninsured adults ages 18 to 64 reported not seeing a doctor or other health professional in 2023."
"Applied to the estimated 27.9 million adults without insurance in 2026, this means that approximately 13 million Americans will never reach the most basic prerequisite for using TrumpRx: a visit with a clinician who can write a prescription," CAP added.
The think tank's analysis found that 17 of the drugs on TrumpRx—or over 30% of them—have generic equivalents that are available at a lower cost elsewhere, something that the Trump-branded platform doesn't tell users.
"Among the remaining 37 drugs without lower-cost generics, GoodRx offers comparable or lower prices for 20," CAP found. "That leaves 17 drugs where TrumpRx appears to offer a better deal. But in 16 of those cases, the same or lower prices were already available through manufacturer coupons and patient assistance programs. After accounting for all existing discount channels, just one drug—Cetrotide, a fertility medication—offers a price that was not previously available to cash-paying patients."
Neda Ashtari, associate director of health policy at CAP and author of the new analysis, said in a statement that the Trump administration is "undermining the most powerful tool for lowering patients’ costs at the pharmacy counter—health insurance coverage—and replacing it with a government-branded coupon book."
“For the 22 million Americans whose premiums have doubled, and the millions more who stand to lose coverage," due to Trump and the GOP's refusal to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, "a $56 discount on a fertility drug is not 'immediate relief,'" Ashtari added.
CAP's analysis was released a day before The New York Times and the German news organizations Süddeutsche Zeitung, NDR, and WDR debunked Trump's claim last month to have delivered the lowest drug prices "in the entire world"—which would be news to the 1 in 3 US adults who say they've rationed medications, skipped meals, or made other painful tradeoffs over the past year to afford healthcare expenses.
"The drugs listed on TrumpRx can cost American patients up to hundreds or thousands of dollars, while a patient walking into a German pharmacy pays next to nothing," the Times observed on Wednesday. "The German health system foots the bill, and records show that, more often than not, it pays less than what the Trump administration negotiated for Americans."
Sixty percent of respondents blamed the energy demand of large users like AI data centers for higher household electricity costs.
It's been two weeks since Big Tech companies gathered at the White House to sign a nonbinding pledge saying they will not pass on higher utility costs to consumers as the rapid build-out of energy-intensive artificial intelligence data centers sends electricity bills skyrocketing—but polling out Wednesday showed a majority of Americans reject President Donald Trump's plan to leave corporations responsible for tackling the affordability crisis.
Those same companies, said most respondents to a survey by Data for Progress and Groundwork Collaborative, are responsible for higher costs that have hit households across the country, and can't be trusted to ensure life is more affordable for families.
Instead, said 61% of respondents, "cracking down on price gouging" from both utility and energy companies would be the most effective way to lower the cost of electricity. In comparison, just 35% said building more energy infrastructure to meet demands was the answer to high costs.
While Trump has been forced in recent weeks to acknowledge that "energy demands from AI data centers could unfairly drive up" people's energy costs, as he admitted in his State of the Union address while announcing AI companies would sign his "ratepayer protection pledge," the president has largely deflected blame regarding the affordability crisis—or denied its existence altogether.
Trump claimed at a rally in Kentucky last week that "the economy is roaring back," even as his $1 billion-per-day, unprovoked war on Iran inflamed tensions across the Middle East and drove up oil prices.
Groundwork said in its analysis of the poll that following Trump's announcement of the ratepayer protection pledge, "Americans reject this reliance on corporations to do the right thing."
Elizabeth Pancotti, managing director of policy and advocacy for Groundwork Collaborative, said that "utility prices are up and consumers know the truth: These price increases are being driven by corporate greed and unchecked AI data center growth."
Trump has pushed to accelerate the construction of new data centers by fast-tracking the permitting process.
Two-thirds of those surveyed said their monthly electricity payments have gone up in the past year, with nearly a quarter of respondents saying they had increased by "a lot." More than 40% of people said they are now paying between $101-$200 per month for electricity.
As Common Dreams reported last November, Trump's demand for AI companies to build massive, energy-sucking data centers in communities across the US has been linked to rising costs of consumers, with the average overdue balance on utility bills surging by 32% in the last three years and states with high concentrations of AI data centers seeing electricity prices skyrocket by as much as 16% from 2024-25.
Sixty percent of respondents told Data for Progress and Groundwork Collaborative that the energy demand of large commercial users like AI data centers is to blame for higher consumer prices, and the same percentage of people also blamed high compensation for utility company executives. Sixty-three percent of those polled said high profits for utility companies and their investors were to blame.
Joint Economic Committee Democrats revealed Tuesday that the average annual US electric bill increased by $110 last year.
A 2022 analysis by Accountable.US found that the nine largest US energy utility companies raked in nearly $14 billion in combined profits in the first three quarters of that year and handed out $11 billion to shareholders while tens of millions of households struggled with rising utility bills.
Nearly 60% of the 1,149 people polled by the two progressive think tanks also said the public sector must take a leadership role on providing energy, "because the public sector doesn't collect profits and can pass on savings to customers," and 60% said the public sector should be responsible for upgrading and modernizing the electric grid because it is a "public resource that should serve all Americans equally, not generate profits for shareholders."
Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy for Groundwork and a former Biden administration official, said the poll revealed that "the people believe in public power."
The groups also polled respondents on their opinions of "energy superusers," including cryptocurrency companies, AI data centers, and AI firms.
Crypto companies were the least popular, with 54% disapproving compared to 26% who approved. Voters disapproved of AI data centers by a 16-point margin and AI companies in general by an 8-point margin.
Nearly two-thirds said they believe new AI data centers would raise their energy costs, and voters across the political spectrum opposed new data centers in their communities.
Grassroots efforts have taken off in states including Michigan, Wisconsin, and New Jersey as community members have rejected the construction of data centers on the grounds that they would consume massive amounts of water as well as electricity, threaten jobs, and take up space that could otherwise be used for affordable housing and small businesses.
"Voters feel ripped off by the corporations who hold their utilities hostage and are calling on lawmakers to put an end to the profiteering racket," said Pancotti. "It’s time for regulators and policymakers to answer the call to protect working families from predatory utility corporations and Big Tech.”