The unwritten rule that you do not schedule ordnance around a ballot died at no fixed age, survived by a bombing moved to after the midterms and by the chamber that went home for seven weeks without voting on the war.

…(cont) Thursday the seventeenth was the worst day of the illness. The U.N. fact-finding mission on Iran, established by the Human Rights Council in 2022, reported reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed war crimes in two strikes inside the country; the New York Times reported that the mistakes leading to the deaths of more than a hundred children at an Iranian school "went beyond negligence," and that a separate strike the same day killed a reported 22 civilians, and Truthout reported the inquiry found clearly identifiable civilian sites struck in Minab and Lamerd. The White House, the New York Post reported, came out swinging. A Fox News poll that day found 70 percent of voters saying the president lacks a clear strategy and 60 percent calling the military action the wrong decision. Moody's Analytics put the extra spending by American households on energy since February at $121 billion, and the war's cost at an average of $1,760 a household in under eight months. Every Senate Democrat except Senator Fetterman signed a letter pressing Secretary Hegseth for a cost breakdown. The Pentagon's policy chief briefed Armed Services behind closed doors, and members of both parties came out saying they had not gotten clear answers. And the president told Axios: "I have a big decision coming up. Do I want to go in and annihilate them, or do I not?"

The chamber that might have asked him to put that to a vote was not in town. Speaker Johnson had sent lawmakers home for a seven-week recess ahead of the midterms. Representative Massie spent that Thursday counting signatures on a discharge petition about something else entirely.

By then the campaign calendar was visible to everyone, including the president's own candidates. On Tuesday the twenty-second Representative Donalds removed mentions of the endorsement from his gubernatorial campaign website; on Wednesday the twenty-third a Tennessee candidate dropped "Pro-Trump" from his slogan. On Saturday the president called the reporting "Another Fake Story."

Then the death. Iran's seven-day offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, declined, preceded it. The bombing was moved to after the midterms.

It is survived by $6.48 diesel, and by the explanation, delivered on Fox News by the president's ambassador to the United Nations, that the diesel came from Ukraine. It is survived by Matt Bell, who has farmed in North Carolina more than half his life, voted for the president, and told CBS News that farmers are "all just in survival mode" and that he was sold a bill of goods. It is survived by an internal Army message reviewed by CBS News, which says some units would "possibly [be] needed in 90-120 days" around Cuba. That one has a calendar of its own.

In lieu of flowers: a recorded vote on the war, taken by the chamber that went home for seven weeks.