September 11, 2026

Good morning! Today is Friday, September 11th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. On day 195 of the Iran War, Trump promises the fighting ends after the midterms while his own top advisors privately warn it could drag past Inauguration Day, even as Iranian strikes damage American aircraft in Jordan and the Houthis seize a strategic Red Sea port. At the first-ever midterm convention, Trump dangles a five-thousand-dollar dividend to voters, but Jude Russo argues the showmanship can't mask rising prices, tightening credit, and a president who may already sense the majority slipping away. Andrew Day reports from Germany, where the AfD's forty-four percent landslide in Saxony-Anhalt has shattered the postwar taboo that long capped the right, exposing a liberal establishment increasingly reliant on surveillance and coalition blockades to hold back the popular will. and now for the details. We begin with day one hundred ninety-five of the Iran War. President Trump told reporters Wednesday that the conflict will end right after November's midterm elections, saying the Iranians, quote, can't hold out any longer. He repeated the claim at the Republican convention in Dallas, arguing Tehran is hanging on hoping Democrats prevail. But on the same day, the Wall Street Journal reported that Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and other senior officials have warned the president privately that the war could drag on through the rest of his term, potentially past Inauguration Day in January 2029. As Luke Nicastro reports for The American Conservative, Iran's Tuesday strike on a U.S. airbase in Jordan appears to have damaged aircraft and possibly injured American troops. Officials confirmed no fatalities, but said some servicemembers may have suffered traumatic brain injuries. One A-10 reportedly had a wing blown off, and eight F-15s sustained lighter damage. Meanwhile, Yemen's Houthi militia has captured the strategic Red Sea port of Mokha, a development that could strengthen their ability to threaten energy shipments through the Bab el-Mandeb waterway. The average price of regular gasoline in the United States now stands at four dollars and twenty-eight cents a gallon. President Trump took the stage Wednesday night in Dallas at the first-ever midterm convention held by either major party. He was, by all accounts, in fine form: discursive, wisecracking, and good-humored. The centerpiece of the speech was a promise of a five thousand dollar Trump dividend for every American adult, should Republicans win both chambers in November. Jude Russo, writing for The American Conservative, argues the performance was a refreshing return to classic Trump, but raises harder questions beneath the showmanship. Russo notes that Trump leaned on real Republican strengths, the stock market, border enforcement, Democratic disarray on identity politics, but struggled to paper over serious headwinds. Selling the Iran War after Americans are already feeling the economic pain is difficult rhetoric. Mocking Democratic appeals to affordability rings hollow when prices are still rising and credit is tightening. As for the five thousand dollar dividend, Russo observes that such a payout would be stupendously expensive at a moment when Treasury yields are climbing into rarefied territory. The only reason to make such a promise, he suggests, is if you don't really expect to have to deliver on it. Russo's conclusion: Trump himself seemed to know Wednesday night that the midterms may already be slipping away, and chose instead to enjoy the adulation of the crowd. To Germany now, where the Alternative for Germany party, the AfD, has won a stunning victory in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, taking forty-four percent of the vote. The center-right Christian Democrats finished a distant second at seventeen percent. Andrew Day, reporting for The American Conservative, spoke with Filip Gaspar, a political advisor and AfD member, who called it the most significant German election since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Day argues the result marks a genuine breakdown of postwar liberal mythology. For decades, invoking the memory of National Socialism has functioned as a ceiling on right-wing support in Germany. That ceiling appears to be cracking. Day notes the German domestic intelligence agency last year designated the AfD a right-wing extremist party, enabling surveillance and the placement of informants. Since then, the AfD has only grown more popular, becoming the leading party nationally. Chancellor Friedrich Merz reiterated on the eve of the vote that his CDU would never form a coalition with the AfD, invoking Germany's historical responsibility and denouncing the party's remigration policy as ethnic cleansing. Day's argument is that opposition to mass migration, not economic anxiety, is the true engine of the European right, and that voters in the former East, long accustomed to state-imposed ideology, are pr