There is a “dangerously circular” dynamic at play that is causing President Donald Trump’s Iran War to last far longer than anyone — including the president — has suggested, and it involves oil.

The Atlantic‘s Rogé Karma argues that when the price of oil gets too high, Trump declares the war is near an end, and the price then drops, reducing the pressure on Trump to end the war sooner.

Karma calls it “the TACO equilibrium.”

Pointing to an “underlying belief,” Karma writes that “Trump will inevitably back down once the economic pain gets high enough. This is the so-called TACO theory of Trump’s decision making, as in ‘Trump Always Chickens Out.'”

“The market has correctly realized there’s an audience of one who will determine the outcome of this, and that’s Trump,” Arnab Datta, a managing director at the think tank Employ America, told Karma. “Among traders, the assumption is that the pain can only get so high before Trump retreats.”

“That logic turns out to be dangerously circular,” Karma posits. “Prices are low because investors expect Trump to end the war before prices get too high; but because prices are low, Trump faces less pressure to end the war.”

“Prices rise, Trump talks about a deal, prices fall, and then Trump suddenly feels like he doesn’t actually need to make the deal,” oil-markets analyst Rory Johnston told Karma.

Trump “seems to have figured out that he can calm the oil markets simply by gesturing at the prospect of a peace deal every so often,” Karma explains. “Of course, a peace deal or a new cease-fire could still be announced at any moment. But the dynamic between Trump and the markets—call it the TACO equilibrium—is what has kept the war going longer than almost anyone expected.”

There is precedent for this TACO theory: Trump’s 2025 “Liberation Day” tariffs, when the president initially backed down just hours after they started to go into effect.

“A mere 13 hours into his new trade policy, Trump backed off and announced a 90-day pause on the tariffs, citing the fact that the markets had gotten ‘yippy,'” says Karma. “Interest rates fell and the stock market experienced its largest one-day rally of the year. Investors who had bet that Trump would blink made a lot of money.”

This cycle “can’t last forever. Markets are starting to catch on. Johnston pointed out that the impact of Trump’s peace announcements on oil prices has been diminishing over time, as traders begin to recognize the pattern.”

But for now, Karma concludes, “the TACO equilibrium continues to hold.”

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Despite his claim that he does not care about the midterms, President Donald Trump has been focused on securing GOP majority control of both chambers of Congress in November.

His revenge campaign nearly over, Trump has managed to use the primaries to unseat House and Senate Republicans he deemed disloyal — largely despite their voting records. His plan to gain seats in the House appears likely to be successful, picking up roughly ten seats through his redistricting scheme.

“But primaries are not general elections, and winning in November is what really counts,” writes Keith Naughton at The Hill. “Trump could be setting himself up for trouble, and it could well come from a senator not even on the ballot.”

There could be trouble ahead for Senate Republicans who currently hold a 53-47 majority. The majority of “at-risk” seats belong to Republicans, several of which Democrats are poised to flip, including North Carolina and Maine.

That leaves Ohio, Texas, and Michigan, which are toss-ups, according to RealClearPolitics.

It’s Texas where “Trump may have just won the battle but lost the war,” explains Naughton. Many believe Trump’s 11th-hour decision to endorse MAGA Attorney General Ken Paxton over conservative Senator John Cornyn may have been a shot in the foot.

Democratic State Rep. James Talarico reported he took in more than $3 million in the first 24 hours after Paxton won the GOP primary runoff this week.

Naughton examines other races as well, but concludes there is one GOP senator who could upend the president’s plans.

U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) could decide to become an independent but vote with the Democrats — flipping control of the Senate to the Democrats.

Naughton says he thinks Murkowski leaving the GOP and conferencing with the Democrats is a “pretty strong bet.”

“Murkowski has already mused making a switch,” he writes. “Although she tried to dress up remaining a Republican in terms of public policy, the likely reality is that it makes no sense to move from the majority party to the minority — what is the profit in that? Turning the minority party into the majority party, however — that could be very profitable for Murkowski, and for Alaska in general.”

In 2022, Trump endorsed a Murkowski challenger, but she kept her seat. And in 2010, she was forced to run a write-in campaign, and still kept her seat.

“For Murkowski,” Naughton notes, “who voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges and has little loyalty to the Republican Party, switching gets easier as her longtime colleagues leave the Senate chamber — some due to Trump’s machinations.”

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President Donald Trump has had his eyes on Cuba, but while he reportedly is biding his time, there are plans in place.

“Iran’s not finished, and the president is not in a rush,” a senior administration official told Axios, according to a report in The Daily Beast. “Trump wants to exhaust all the levers that he can. But at this point, there aren’t as many levers as before.”

Noting that Trump wants a “peaceful transition to a free Cuba,” Axios calls his approach the “methodical squeezing of Cuba’s communist regime.”

“To bring Cuba to its knees this year,” Axios revealed, “the administration first focused on the island’s lifeline: Venezuela and its socialist leader, Nicolas Maduro, who kept Havana afloat with shipments of oil that helped power the country and gave it a source of export revenue.”

The Trump administration captured Maduro during a raid in early January.

A senior Trump administration official called the approach “accelerationism.” The Daily Beast reports they were “referring to the fringe philosophy of speeding up a perceived inevitable societal collapse.”

“But we don’t want to kill off the regime just yet. There’s a method to this. It’s in stages,” they said. That strategy allows the commander in chief to focus on his three-month-long war in Iran — something Senate Republicans reportedly prefer takes priority over any Cuba incursion.

The president’s approach to Cuba is “classic Trump,” a presidential advisor told Axios: “Push your enemy off balance. It’s pressure, watch the response, apply more pressure, watch the response, apply more pressure.”

While the administration says there is no immediate plan to invade the island nation of roughly 9.7 million people, the Defense Department is primed and has been performing “tabletop” exercises in preparation. Axios credits Secretary of State Marco Rubio as a “chief architect of Trump’s Latin America policy.”

But according to Axios, one Trump advisor said: “The president does not want boots on the ground for more than 48 hours. It’s a quagmire in the making. This could get messy.”

“Everything is on the table, but no invasion is planned or imminent,” a senior official told Axios. “When POTUS says go, we’re ready for anything.”

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