Trump went to war to bury his 2 biggest political nightmares — and they're both worsening

The purpose of Donald Trump’s war in Iran is to deflect our attention, especially from two big things Trump wants banished from the headlines and erased from the our collective consciousness. Which means we need to focus on them like lasers.

1. The affordability crisis. It’s worsening.

Prices were rising even before Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu attacked Iran — which was one reason for him plunging America into war. He wanted to remove “affordability” from the news (he called it a “Democratic scam”) .

But Trump’s war is causing prices to rise even faster.

About 20 percent of world oil and gas production passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which is now essentially closed to shipping. This means higher prices at the pump. As of this morning, oil prices were approximately $15 to $16 a barrel higher than they were in mid-February, which will add roughly 40 cents to the price of a gallon of gasoline. If the war continues for a month or more, oil (and gas) prices could go much higher.

The war is also causing food prices — which were also high before the war — to rise even faster. That’s because roughly a quarter to a third of the global trade in ammonia and nitrogen, the critical raw materials for making fertilizer, must also pass through the strait. Without fertilizer, crop yields fall.

Fertilizer prices are already rising, as they did in early 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Likewise, anticipated lower crop yields are already raising the prices of household staples such as bread, pasta and potatoes to rise, and making animal feed more costly.

Adding to these are larger risks to the nation’s financial stability created by a regional war whose aim continues to be vague. The private credit market poses one vulnerability; the AI bubble, another. The result is uncertainty that causes lenders to demand a higher premium to cover extra risks.

Already, fears of more serious inflation are driving up interest rates on ten-year Treasury bonds. I expect rates on mortgages and car loans to rise in tandem.

Oy.

2. Epstein

The other thing Trump wanted to deflect our attention from is the Epstein files. But they won’t go away, either.

After the Wall Street Journal earlier this week identified more than 40,000 files that appeared to be missing from documents posted to the Justice Department’s website, a Justice Department spokeswoman today admitted that “47,635 files were offline for further review” and “should be ready for re-production by the end of the week.”

Further review? Sure looks like a cover-up. The withheld files include FBI notes on a series of interviews a woman gave to agents in 2019 in which she alleged sexual misconduct by both Trump and Epstein when she was a minor in the 1980s.

By law, the Justice Department was required to release the Epstein files in full by Dec. 19, 2025. (The Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA), which Trump signed into law in November, required that all the documents be made public within 30 days, with some limited exceptions.) So far, only about half the files have been released, and many are heavily redacted.

Even House Republicans are becoming upset about this, presumably because the Republican base wants it cleared up.

“AG Bondi claims the DOJ has released all of the Epstein files. The record is clear: they have not,” House Republican Nancy Mace wrote on X. She continued:

“The Epstein case is one of the greatest cover-ups in American history. His global sex trafficking network is larger than what is being revealed. Three million documents have been released, and we still don’t have the full truth. Videos are missing. Audio is missing. Logs are missing. There are millions more documents out there. We want to know why the DOJ is more focused on shielding the powerful than delivering justice.”

Fighting words, and from a Republican. On Wednesday, by a vote of 24-19, the House Oversight Committee agreed to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi to testify about the release of the Epstein files. Five Republicans voted in favor, including Mace, who put the motion forward, along with Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Michael Cloud of Texas, and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.

After the vote, Mace told reporters:

“I know that Bondi has testified before the Judiciary Committee, but she’s not testified before me or the Oversight Committee. I need to get to the bottom of this for other survivors of Jeffrey Epstein. I have a lot more questions, and I don’t expect to be talking about the stock market [which she did when she testified before the Judiciary Committee] so she better not bring those notes when she comes to the Oversight Committee.”

Mace said the subpoena is for closed-door testimony with video that will be released to the public afterward.

**

One more thing, which Trump probably doesn’t want us to pay much attention to, either.

On Thursday afternoon, he finally fired Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary. What put him over the brink was not the murder of two Americans by Noem’s immigration agents, or ICE’s brutality, or the unconstitutionality of arresting and detaining people without due process. No, what really got him riled up (according to several sources) was Noem’s combative hearing on Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee in which she alleged that Trump had signed off on a $220 million self-promotional ad campaign featuring her appearing on horseback against the background of Mt. Rushmore.

If there’s one thing Trump can’t stand, it’s someone else’s self-promotion. Besides, he wants his face on Mt. Rushmore.

• Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org