Doing extra duty at Naked Capitalism this week while Yves handles the site’s annual fundraiser.
First up, I covered the latest events in the Iran War:
Iran War: Pezeshkian Says His Piece at the UN, China Won’t Sanction Iranian Airlines
Masoud Pezeshkian, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran spoke Wednesday at the UN. He opened by saying he dispensed with his prepared remarks after hearing Trump’s speech of the day before. Then he displayed photos of victims of the initial US bombing attack, leading the US delegation to walk out.
Selected quotes from the UN English-language translation:
In the name of God, the most compassionate, the most merciful. Mr. President, Mr. Secretary-General, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, I had prepared a speech to present to you yesterday. The United States president described us as terrorists. We have been the victims of terrorism.
I come from an Iran in which our esteemed Supreme Leader was assassinated without any legal framework or reason. I come from an Iran where, in truth, they bombed a school. You see these children. These children perished under bombs, with weapons used by the United States and Israel. They were innocent. They had committed no crimes.
Lamerd, one of the small cities in a province in Iran: a sports hall where children were busy playing. The United States, using weapons with multiple warheads, targeted that sports hall. They martyred, assassinated our scientists, our men, women and children — innocent children who, in truth, had committed no crimes, no sins.
Those who are terrorists, and train and protect terrorists, describe us as such. We have only defended ourselves. We are not terrorists. Our innocent people have been the targets of cowardly attacks and aggressions imposed upon our country, and we defended ourselves with utmost strength. America and Israel attacked us, equipped with the latest technology and weapon systems, and our people stood steadfast. Yes, they did hit us, but we did not bend the knee. We did not bow our head. We responded, but we did not hit civilian populations. They came into surrounding territories and targeted our universities, our health care centers, our schools, our hospitals, our infrastructure. All of it against international law.
…In any province, and commits assassinations like a true terrorist. In Gaza, over 80,000 innocent civilians have been murdered, brutally murdered. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced. They are committing genocide using the so-called technologies they have at their disposal. Then they label others as terrorists.
Are we the sources of instability? We only seek to live independently. Are we the ones who cause instability? Those who are committing terrorism and committing crimes, are they the protectors of peace and stability? None of the international laws have been adhered to by them. This is what we’re facing.
…
For the past two centuries, Iran has not attacked any country or any territory, but we have always defended ourselves steadfastly. Now we are being accused of being a source of instability in the region. We are labeled terrorists. And this has made it so that the path we have chosen for ourselves requires power to defend ourselves. We do not seek power in order to attack or commit aggression. We seek energy for progress, not to threaten societies with weapons, and we wish to cooperate and collaborate for security.
…
We seek energy for progress. For years they have attached labels — centrifuges, international sanctions and other labels — to our nuclear technology. But for our country, peaceful nuclear technology is part of our inherent progress: for our sick people it is cure and treatment, for the agricultural sector it is food security, for industry it is advancement and progress and the supply of electrical energy. Iran does not accept that nuclear technology be at the exclusive disposal of a handful. We will not bow our head and give up the right that is inherently ours. We say it clearly: no nuclear weapons, and no limitations on peaceful nuclear technology.
Our peace will not come on the field of battle. But they must give the needed security to the people and nation of Iran. We seek cooperation in order to have security. We live in a region in which warfare knows no borders. Crisis in one land will spill into the surrounding nations. That is why Iran does not see her neighbors as security rivals. We want to have strong neighbors.
In the waters of the Strait of Hormuz, we cannot let some have free access and gain their interests from a waterway while at the same time using that waterway to impose their aggressions and insecurity upon us, and to forbid us access to our own waterways. They close access for us to our own waterway, yet they keep supplying missiles and deadly military technologies to bring insecurity to all of the lands surrounding that waterway. We will not succumb to that. The expansion of warfare will not result in security. One cannot create chaos for the coastal countries while seeking naval security.
Excellencies, vis-à-vis Palestine: Palestine remains an open wound on the conscience of the international community, and Gaza remains a symbol of the failure of international mechanisms to prevent civilian suffering. For decades, resolutions have been adopted, yet occupation and violence have continued. We cannot speak of peace while ignoring Palestine. Lasting peace in West Asia is impossible without justice for Palestine.
As long as occupation, aggression and injustice persist in the world, resistance will continue.
…
And now a few words with those who are responsible for having planned and carried out aggressions against our country. Our people have experienced firsthand the result of their deadly aggression, and they have tested the strength and the steadfastness of Iran, and they have learned that Iran cannot be made to surrender. Iran has never been an aggressor, has never started a war, and has always shown her commitment to the negotiating table. They imposed the war on us. But we have proven that we are not afraid of war. [We] won a war that is defensive in nature, and we will stand in defense of our beloved Iran, our homeland, until our last breath.
…
I will repeat: the nuclear weapon is in Israel, but the inspectors are in Iran. Israel kills, but Iran is subject to sanctions. This is a true tragedy, which would make anyone hearing it laugh, at best. They kill; we are sanctioned, we are punished. Those who are ill, innocent people, the poor, the least privileged in our society are the targets of these sanctions. And this is what the United States seeks to do with all countries: to sacrifice the population of a country in order to achieve its illegitimate goals.
…
But going back to the words of the president of the United States yesterday: those who are experts in international law, dialogue, diplomacy and basic human standards can see that everything uttered about our country goes against the very essence, the Charter and the spirit of the United Nations. He must know that the resistance of the Iranian people will only increase in the face of sanctions, increased pressure, increased bullying. We will never bow our head or bend the knee. It must be understood by Mr. Trump and those who seek to bully us that we are ready for dialogue and diplomacy and negotiations, without accepting the language of force.
There’s a ton of MSM coverage but nothing that has anything worthwile to add to Pezeshkian’s remarks.
Now let’s talk about China.
Trump Rolls Out the Red Carpet for Xi
Read the rest at Naked Capitalism.
Then I wrote about the terrible situation the Texas GOP finds itself in.
Rancid Texas Republicans Reign in Ruins?
If the polling data is to be believed, Texas Republicans, who haven’t lost a statewide election since 1994, might be coming to the end of their reign, led by a roster of corrupt loons whose arrogance and support for unpopular policies have set the table for a turnover.
Trump hasn’t helped one bit. His disastrous Iran War has raised gas prices and only made inflation worse. Trump’s collapsing support with rural voters and Latinos is hurting the Texas GOP where they live — their base and the demographic where they’d been gaining strength.
But they’ve gone out of their way to ruin their reputations with by tyring themselves to profoundly unpopular line items like a seemingly endless string of corruption and sex scandals (US Senate Nominee Ken Paxton), data center expansion, school vouchers (Governor Gregg Abbott), a ban on the state’s semi-legal THC smokables market (Lt. Governor Dan Patrick), open racism of a kind not acceptable in the state since the 1950s (Railroad Commission nominee Bo French), and troubling links to Jeffrey Epstein (State Comptroller nominee Don Huffines).
But first I need to make a point.
In 2026, No Politics Is Local
The late US Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill’s maxim about all politics being local hasn’t been true in decades.
That’s critical to keep in mind when talking about state politics in the United States in the 21st Century.
The national media has completely eaten regional and local media.
Thirty-five years ago when I was starting out in politics, Texas had popular, prosperous major daily newspapers in all its major cities and every small city and town had a local paper that covered local news with varying degrees of quality. That’s on top of at least three major network affiliates in every city, major and minor, all of which had news gathering operations plus a wide variety of radio stations most of them locally owned.
That all changed with the one-two punch of Bill Clinton’s 1996 Telecommunications Act which legalized mass consolidation of media property ownership and the internet which cut the legs out from under first the newspaper business and then television news.
The net effect of all of this has been that for this entire century the national news monoculture has utterly dominated the narrative everywhere. The average Texan has been barely more likely to know about Ken Paxton’s endless indictments and scandals than someone living in Florida or California who pays close attention to the news.
That means the national political context matters most of all. So let’s look at Trump’s numbers in nationally and in Texas because the 2026 elections are ultimately a referendum on the POTUS and his Trump 2.0 regime.
Trump Has Shat the Bed
This infographic from Real Clear Politics says a lot:
With the exception of the Texas US Senate race at the bottom those numbers are all national, but look at this Marist poll of Texans (taken from September 17-20) Trump’s approval is at 43%, disapproval at 55%. 39% say their congressional vote is a vote against Trump, 25% for him. Nearly four in ten say family finances have worsened in the past year.
The University of Texas/Texas Politics Project has Trump’s approval at the same 43%, with disapproval lower at 50% but also shows a trendline down from 52-38% in February.
What happened in February? Oh, yea.
Wonder if that has anything to do with the record-breaking high fuel prices that are killing the GOP at the polls?
Trump is also bleeding support with rural voters nationally. This AP-KFF poll has him at 48% with rural voters nationally, not bad compared to some demos, but when one remembers that Trump won rural voters in 2024 by a thirty point margin, 64%-34%.
Most of this erosion has to do with the economy, but 60% of rural Texans oppose a data center in their community. We’ll talk about that more when we get to Governor Greg Abbott.
But first we need to mention Trump’s popularity implosion with Hispanic Texans — keep in mind Texas is 40% non-Hispanic White, 40% Hispanic, almost 12% Black, and 5% Asian — Trump won this demographic handily in 2024 with an estimated 55% of the Hispanic Texan vote.
The Texas legislature excitedly re-drew the congressional district lines in 2025 to capitalize on this newfound strength with the Tejano community, but that might come back to bite them:
A September poll of 1,000 Latinos in Texas conducted for Cook Political and TelevisaUnivision found that 18% of Latinos who voted for Trump no longer support him, and almost two-thirds of Latino voters would be less likely to vote for candidates who support Trump’s immigration policies.
For both parties, those shifts explain both the promise and peril of Latino voters. Their support has often proved less dependent on party loyalty than on whether they believe elected officials will improve their economic circumstances.
Trump’s disapproval number with Texas Latinos is 66%, and well, that ain’t good.
And it’s more about the economy than immigration policy by a wide margin.
We’ll top off with 2,000 words’ worth of infographics:
