Terrible tragedies are coming. And the Republican Party owns them.

Trump has thrown America into financial crisis, expanding war, and a surging terror threat. The only good news is that he's all-but-guaranteed Republicans will lose in November.

Last week, I made some predictions after Trump’s ill-fated war with Iran. I said he’d dramatically increased the terror threat to the United States (here and here) and that he’d lit the fuse of a global financial crisis. Barely a week into the war, both predictions are coming true. It didn't take a genius to make this forecast. But it did require a senile sociopath to bring it to fruition. Now it's about to get worse.

Let’s start with the terror threat.

There was a reported explosion at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway over the weekend. Details are still emerging, but it wouldn’t at all surprise me if this was a terrorist attack carried out by an individual inspired by Iranian actors or working on their behalf. We should be expecting these sorts of reprisals, and worse.

More alarming than Oslo is what happened at the same time in Washington. The White House reportedly blocked DHS and the FBI from releasing an urgent terror threat bullein. I know what those warnings look like because I used to help write them. And I cannot imagine any conceivable reason for the White House to withhold such alerts, except for an unforgivable one: because they’re too insecure to admit they just put American lives in danger.

The Iran war is a gigantic target on the backs of Americans and the U.S. Homeland. The GOP knows it. The president’s political aides know it. Hell, even Trump himself knows it. That’s why his response to a question the other day about whether Americans should worry about retaliatory attacks was a begrudging two words:

“I guess.”

That’s actually what he said, by the way. And God forbid if tragedy strike the United States, that comment will follow him and haunt him wherever he goes. I hope someone is already printing the banners with the words, “I GUESS,” to show up at Trump rallies and appearances to remind him of his complicity. Because it’s clear he’s more worried about his political standing than he is about your safety.

And that’s the fundamental bargain Trump has just broken. The entire premise of the post-9/11 national security state — one I was part of building — was that the government would be honest with the American people about the threat environment, even when the news was bad. In fact, especially when the news was bad. That compact is apparently gone. The administration that launched a war without authorization is now hiding the consequences of that war from the citizens who will bear them.

I would typically say we should “defy” the fear — and in the deepest sense, we should. We cannot let terrorism reshape how we live. That’s the whole game, and I believe that in my bones. But I also have to be straight with you about the danger because the president won’t be. He launched this war without a plan, without authorization, and without a coherent strategy for managing the blowback in our own backyard.

As a direct and foreseeable consequence, the threat level is significantly elevated. Iran has extensive proxy networks and every reason to activate them against American soft targets. Embassies and bases are hardened. But shopping malls and outdoor concerts are not. In the absence of a government doing its job, you have to do some of it yourself. Be aware, know your surroundings, and trust your instincts, especially if you live in a major U.S. city or are traveling abroad. If you see something, say something.

This isn’t paranoia. This is what a functioning government would be telling you, if we had one.

And then there’s the financial catastrophe unfolding in slow motion (except it isn’t even moving that slowly anymore). In my piece last week, I told you to watch oil. I told you that if prices crossed $100 a barrel, we’d know the markets had priced in a long and destabilizing conflict — and that the people with the most money on the line had concluded this war wasn’t ending soon. It didn’t even take three days past publication for the threshold to break. Three days. The price crossed $100 a barrel before the ink was metaphorically dry.

We’re now in the danger zone of a major financial crisis.

The cascade from here could get quite ugly. American families will pay for it at the gas pump, at the grocery store, in their heating bills, and every single day this continues. And the federal government will pretend like it can “take steps” to remedy the situation, but options will be severely limited. Higher oil means higher inflation, which puts the Fed in an impossible position. Raise rates to fight inflation while the economy is already wobbling from tariffs and trade disruption, or hold and let prices run. Either choice is bad and means you’re likely to see economic hardship spreading.

None of this was necessary. This was a war of choice that has become an economic catastrophe of choice.

Whether it turns into a full-blown financial crisis on the scale of (or greater than) 2008 depends on whether the White House decides to end the war or keep it going to stroke the president’s ego. He can’t stand looking like “a loser.” So in his quest to feel like “a winner,” he may take a wrecking ball to the global economy by plowing forward with this war until he feels like Tehran is leveled enough for him to one day erect a gaudy Trump Tower from its rubble.

Here’s the only genuinely good news in any of this. Donald Trump has almost certainly just handed Democrats the midterms.

A majority of Americans opposed this war before the first bomb dropped. That opposition will only grow as casualties mount, oil prices bite, and the suppressed threat warnings likely give way to real-world tragedy. Wars that begin without popular support and without a clear path to victory become anchors around the necks of the politicians who own them.

Republicans own this one completely. They voted against war powers resolutions. They cheered Trump’s strikes. They basically lashed themselves to the president with ball-and-chain oblivion, and now there’s no daylight left between them and the decisions producing $100 oil and an accelerated financial crisis and a terror threat level that’s blinking red.

Hell of a political strategy, guys.

Meanwhile, Trump’s poll numbers are cratering. The coalition that returned him to power was not built on a mandate for new “forever wars.” All those voters wanted was cheaper eggs and to get the hell out of the Middle East. But it’s almost like Trump’s self-destructive tendencies drove him to purposefully give his followers the exact opposite. GOP candidates in competitive races have nowhere to go, and the only thing I’ll relish is watching them squirm politically. They deserve it. Because their lack of a conscience has put us all in danger. Financially and actually.

If we can hold on another few months — if our struggling institutions, our courts, our free press, and the basic good sense of the American public can hold the line — the adults will come back into the room. Let’s just hope the senile sociopath in the White House hasn’t blown everything up before we get there.

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor

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Miles Taylor is the founder of DEFIANCE.org and the former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.