Denver’s early success is not without qualifications. A double homicide rocked the Aspen shelter in 2024. About one-third of people who leave city- owned shelters end up in jail, back on the streets or dead. “Our biggest challenge right now is the throughput into permanent housing,” admits Mr Johnston. A city budget crunch comes as the federal government is cutting housing vouchers and Medicaid, America’s health insurance for the poor. Indeed the biggest question for cities may be how much progress they can make without federal help. Mayors routinely watch experiments elsewhere and adapt them for their own cities. “I like to think of Denver as the quintessential pragmatic approach,” says Samantha Batko, who has been evaluating the city’s policies at the Urban Institute, a think-tank. She suggests that local governments can make gains, even without ARPA dollars, by co-ordinating outreach and tracking new camps in real time. Indeed, Dallas saw success with a similar approach. Other mayors are eager to act. Mr Johnston recalls how three contacted him in a single day to ask about Denver’s homelessness plan. “We want to do this,” they told him. ■ Stay on top of American politics with The US in brief, our daily newsletter with fast analysis of the most important political news, and Checks and Balance, a weekly note that examines the state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//united-states/2026/06/17/as-american-cities-grapple- with-homelessness-one-offers-a-fix
Republicans are desperate to move on from the Iran war The conflict will have stubborn political after-effects June 18th 2026 November’s midterm elections were always going to be difficult for Republicans. The last time the incumbent president’s party gained seats in Congress in a midterm election was in 2002, when Americans rallied around George W. Bush after the September 11th attacks. Donald Trump’s war in Iran will have a different impact. That’s in part because Mr Bush’s “war on terror” eventually left many Americans sceptical of foreign entanglements. It’s also because this particular entanglement has been phenomenally unpopular, and will have stubborn after-effects. Questions about the deal remain, but a few things have become clear. The war has come at a cost to American treasure and prestige. Having burned
through munitions, America’s ability to deter other enemies has been weakened. The conflict has frayed its alliances and shocked global oil markets. For many on Capitol Hill, there is also the vexing question of how the war’s end will affect their job prospects. Just 27% of voters thought America should attack Iran, according to an Economist/YouGov poll conducted a week before the first strikes. Mr Trump’s magnetism within MAGA is such that Republican approval for the strikes jumped from 56% to 76% in the week after the attacks. However, wider support failed to materialise. By early June approval of the war was negligible among Democrats (7%), low among independents (18%) and had even slackened among Republicans (59%). A poll conducted on the eve of the deal’s announcement showed that more than half of self-identified MAGA supporters thought the country should push for one as soon as possible. However, the deal gives Republicans on Capitol Hill little relief, as a matter of policy or politics. A handful are blunt in their assessments. “Reagan is rolling over in his grave”, said Bill Cassidy, an outgoing Republican senator. “Giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is not a good idea,” observed Ted Cruz, another Republican senator. Many Republican colleagues share their concern, more quietly. MAGAsphere critics are less shy. On June 17th Ben Shapiro, an Iran hawk, called the deal “a disaster”. Tucker Carlson, another right-wing commentator, said the conflict was ending “not a moment too soon”, but that the agreement made Iran a “major player”. The biggest concern, for vulnerable Republicans, is the war’s effect on prices. News of a deal sent average petrol prices falling by about 12% from their peak in May, but they remain 35% higher than before the war. It will take time to clear Hormuz of mines and return crude output to pre-war levels. America also has fewer buffers against another supply shock. Since March the administration has tried to blunt high oil prices by releasing barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It is now emptier than at any point since 1983, leaving Mr Trump less able to respond should talks with Iran falter or a summer hurricane disrupt American refineries.
For Democrats, this is a political gift. “It combines both an unwanted foreign military adventure with a direct hit to household finances,” enthuses a senior Democratic aide. “I can’t overstate how big of a political disaster this is for any Republican.” Republican strategists remain optimistic, at least on the record. “Politically, the midterms are light-years away,” insists Charlie Gerow, a Republican strategist from Pennsylvania. “If it’s off the front pages for four or five months, I don’t think this is going to have a political impact,” says Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist. The party’s best hope may be a big new distraction. Mr Trump has many talents, but that is his speciality. ■ Stay on top of American politics with The US in brief, our daily newsletter with fast analysis of the most important political news, and Checks and Balance, a weekly note that examines the state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//united-states/2026/06/18/republicans-are-desperate-to- move-on-from-the-iran-war
Populist president, meet socialist mayor America’s capital is poised to elect a new leftist leader June 18th 2026 IT IS NOT quite right to say that Donald Trump despises Washington, DC. His relationship with the capital is more ambivalent. Some of his interventions have improved the city (the parks look better), while others have damaged it (the tax base looks worse). Most residents, though, are not the least bit mixed in their feelings towards the president: they despise him. That hostility appears to have powered Janeese Lewis George, a far-left candidate for mayor, to victory in the Democratic primary. The race was still uncalled as The Economist went to press, but the gap appeared too large to overcome. That all but ensures that Ms Lewis George will become mayor of the deeply Democratic capital. It also probably means more turbulence in the
relationship between the city and Mr Trump. Days before the vote, he said he might “take back Washington” and “run it on the federal basis” if she won. On election night, Ms Lewis George recalled voters telling her: “If Trump doesn’t like you, I love you!” Such antagonism may play well in a Democratic primary, but Washington is a federal enclave with limited autonomy, meaning it can ill afford to cross the feds. Last year Mr Trump took control of the local police force temporarily, deployed National Guard troops to fight crime and sent in federal agents to round up illegal immigrants. Congress also has the power to nullify local laws, something it has done twice in the past three years. Republicans want to go further. Last year they proposed 14 bills that would restrict the city’s self-government, known as “home rule”. Washington’s current mayor, Muriel Bowser, managed Mr Trump deftly. She ordered local police to co-operate with federal law-enforcement officers, including immigration agents. She also made other conciliatory moves, such as paving over the giant “Black Lives Matter” emblem that had been painted on a boulevard outside the White House. Critics on the left called this appeasement. Ms Lewis George has vowed to end co-operation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The rest of her agenda is ambitious—and expensive. Ms Lewis George is a Democratic Socialist in the vein of Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City. Like him, she has proposed stronger rent controls and more subsidies for child care and public transport. How Washington would pay for it all is less clear. The city is expected to run a $1.3bn deficit this year. That is in part a consequence of the president’s cuts to the federal workforce. The number of federal jobs located in Washington declined by 14% over the past year. Cuts to government contracts have hit private-sector employment, too. As a result, the city’s economy is expected to contract this year. Walk through downtown on a Friday and the streets have the eerie quiet of a post- apocalyptic disaster film. About a fifth of offices are vacant. Ms Lewis George seems to think the main problem is NIMBY constraints on a hot housing market. She wants to see 72,000 units built over five years, much of them subsidised. But soft demand has caused rents in the city to
fall. (Washington still has one of the worst non-payment rates in the country.) Developers, in turn, have pulled back. Last year the number of building permits issued was the lowest in 12 years. Most affordable-housing developments operate at a loss. The candidate’s affinity for rent control will not help. To grow again, the city will need to lure investors and, crucially, people. Crime has fallen but remains disconcertingly high. The city’s lax approach to public safety has become a flashpoint between progressive local council members (Ms Lewis George among them) and the federal government. Even many Democrats in Congress think the council is too soft on crime. In 2023 Joe Biden overrode a local law that would have reduced penalties for carjackings, among other things. Mr Trump has gone much further, provoking the ire of city residents. In Ms Lewis George, they may have found a fighter. But there is little to gain by sparring with the president. Washington needs a problem-solver much more than a pugilist. ■ Stay on top of American politics with The US in brief, our daily newsletter with fast analysis of the most important political news, and Checks and Balance, a weekly note that examines the state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//united-states/2026/06/18/populist-president-meet- socialist-mayor
Political manoeuvres are delaying a spy law and new intelligence chief Crucial surveillance authorities have lapsed June 18th 2026 AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE agencies are used to analysing chaos, but in recent weeks they have endured a different type of uncertainty. First there was the resignation, announced on May 22nd, of Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence (DNI). Then came Donald Trump’s move to replace her with Bill Pulte, a housing official with no national-security experience who used his access to mortgage records to support probes of Mr Trump’s opponents. That prompted Democrats to declare that they would block the renewal of important spying powers until the president offered a better alternative.