A new Daily Mail/JL Partners poll shows voters are increasingly dissatisfied with President Donald Trump’s handling of the ongoing war with Iran, while frustration over stubbornly high living costs continues to weigh heavily across the US.

The survey points to mounting unease over Trump’s second-term agenda, a warning sign for Republicans as the party heads into the final two months before the midterm elections.

Perhaps most striking, the discontent is no longer limited to Trump’s critics. It is now reaching into his loyal political base, exposing cracks among MAGA supporters who once appeared firmly united behind him.

According to the exclusive poll, more than four in ten voters who supported Trump in the 2024 election say he is not doing enough to tackle inflation or ease the cost-of-living crisis facing American households.

Those financial pressures have continued to climb, driven in part by the economic fallout from the Iran war and Trump’s aggressive tariff policies.

This week, the US military released dramatic new footage of its blistering bombardment of Iran’s coast, as Trump urged the country’s citizens to ‘rise up and fight.’

And it doesn’t appear peace is on the horizon anytime soon. 

‘I’m not trying to force Iran to the bargaining table, as ABC Fake News reported,’ Trump wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday. ‘I couldn’t care less if they sign a worthless, to them, agreement.’ 

In the military footage, the US can be seen striking Iranian targets across a 300-mile stretch of coastline in the Strait of Hormuz, as Trump boasted that Tehran’s economy was collapsing.

‘I like our position now much better, with almost total control of the Hormuz Strait, and their economy totally collapsing,’ Trump continued. ‘They are just playing out the inevitable.’

But voters aren’t happy with the length of the conflict, that’s stretched into its seventh month. 

Nearly half of US voters, or 49 percent, said they believe Trump was wrong to launch military action in Iran earlier this year. 

The poll also found that Americans continue to hold dismal views of the war with Iran. 

Just 25 percent of voters said they believe the US is ‘winning’ the war, according to the Daily Mail/JL Partners survey. 

Support was split among party lines, however – with 52 percent of Republicans saying they believe the US is winning the war, compared to just 11 percent of Democrats and 13 percent of independent voters.

A total of 42 percent of voters – more than four in ten – said they believe Trump is ‘most responsible’ for the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. 

A much smaller 17 percent of voters blamed the Iranian government, while 9 percent blamed former US administrations. 

Most shockingly, Americans said they would rather fork over more money for gas than send extra American troops to Iran 

An eye-popping 46 percent of US voters said they would rather pay $5 per gallon gas prices than send more troops to Iran, compared to just 22 percent who said the opposite. 

Among just Republicans, the split was nearly even – 38 percent preferred the higher gas costs, while 39 percent preferred sending more troops to Iran.

Average US gas prices remain elevated at more than $4 a gallon amid higher costs of crude oil due to the war and instability in the Strait of Hormuz. 

Gas prices in August also shattered records, with averages surpassing $4 a gallon every day for the first time ever, according to AAA. 

The high cost of living continues to be another major issue contributing to the drop off in approval rates.   

Consumer prices have been creeping up over the last few months, leaving Americans stuck with stubbornly high inflation that has pushed up the cost of everything from groceries to home loans.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that consumer prices rose by 0.1 percent in July month over month, putting the annual CPI inflation rate at 3.4 percent, down a hair from the 3.5 percent figure in June.

The Daily Mail/JL Partners survey polled a nationally representative sample of more than one thousand registered US voters between the dates of August 28 and August 31, with a 3.1 percent margin of error.   

A man accused of approaching Vice President JD Vance’s Ohio residence while armed with a hammer has pleaded guilty, after defense attorneys pointed to a long record of mental health challenges, including a schizophrenia diagnosis.

Federal prosecutors in Ohio said Tuesday that 26-year-old William D. DeFoor admitted to charges of engaging in acts of physical violence against government officials and willfully damaging U.S. government property.

DeFoor, previously reported by the Daily Mail to be the child of two affluent physicians and possibly transgender, drew national attention earlier this year after authorities said he entered the grounds of Vance’s Cincinnati property.

Secret Service agents took DeFoor into custody in the early morning hours of January 5 after he ran along the front fence of Vance’s $1.4 million home. Vance and his family were in Washington, D.C., when the incident unfolded.

According to officials, DeFoor then tried to smash the driver’s side window of an unmarked federal law enforcement vehicle, hitting it repeatedly with the hammer.

DeFoor continued to strike the windows of Vance’s home with his hammer and refused demands from law enforcement to drop his weapon, according to charging documents. 

Prosecutors estimated that he damaged about $28,000 worth of US government-owned property. 

‘Acts of violence directed against our political leaders, their families, or property, have no place in our society and will not be tolerated. Our elected leaders, at all levels of government, must be permitted to carry out their duties free from threats, vandalism, and other forms of violence,’ US Attorney Dominick S Gerace II said of the guilty plea.

‘Perpetrators like DeFoor, who put that freedom at risk, particularly through violent, destructive actions, will, like here, be vigorously prosecuted.’

DeFoor’s attorneys previously said that his actions had ‘nothing to do with the specifics of the vice president’ and were not politically motivated.

His mother, Catherine DeFoor, said in a media statement in January that mental illness was a ‘terrible thing.’ 

‘It is a struggle which can take over the life of a beautiful person and the people who love and support them,’ she said. 

‘Unfortunately for our child, it has taken over his life in a way that we can never have imagined.’

Defense attorneys cited a history of crimes associated with DeFoor’s mental illness. In 2023, he was charged with trespassing at the University of Cincinnati Health Psychiatric Emergency Services.

The court ruled DeFoor incompetent to stand trial, and the case was dismissed. A year later, he was charged with two counts of vandalism after breaking windows at a local business. A court ordered him to receive treatment. 

His mother was later granted legal guardianship over him after he was found incompetent by reason of mental illness. 

DeFoor’s lawyers previously claimed that he should be released from custody pending trial due to his mental health struggles. 

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‘Mr. DeFoor’s alleged offense conduct was using a hammer to damage two windows and a car and refusing to listen to the orders of Secret Service Agents,’ defense attorneys argued in a motion to release DeFoor.

‘Put more succinctly, while in the midst of an ongoing mental health crisis a young person damaged property and did not listen to someone shouting at him.’    

‘These circumstances are only noteworthy for one reason; it just so happens that this occurred at the home of the Vice President,’ his legal reps added.

Defense attorneys argued that detention would normally never be considered in a vandalism case, adding that prosecutors acknowledged there was no evidence the attack was political.   

‘While in the midst of a mental health crisis, Mr. DeFoor used a hammer to damage a home and a car. This is not the behavior of an inherently violent person, merely a person in crisis,’ defense attorneys argued.

DeFoor’s attorneys detailed his diagnosis of schizophrenia and his past history in and out of medical facilities.

The Daily Mail previously reported that DeFoor attended an elite $27,000-a-year Catholic high school and appeared to have transitioned to female, now going by the name Julia. 

A Facebook profile under the name Julia DeFoor was created a month before the incident.  

The Cincinnati native grew up in the affluent Hyde Park neighborhood in a $1.3 million home with his surgeon father, William, and pediatrician mother, Catherine, and two younger siblings, Libby and Alex.

William is a pediatric urologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. His wife is a general pediatrician at a St Elizabeth Physicians primary care facility in Kentucky.

DeFoor does not appear to have graduated from a traditional four-year university, despite excelling as a high schooler at The Summit Country Day School, a prestigious private school in Cincinnati. 

His attorneys noted in a motion that he spent time in a locked-door mental health facility after his 2024 arrest and found a successful treatment regimen. 

DeFoor managed his symptoms and started working on his bachelor’s degree until they returned in December 2025. 

Judge Douglas R Cole denied DeFoor’s request to await trial at his parents’ home, and he has remained in detention. 

The US Attorney’s Office said a sentencing hearing will come at a later date. He faces up to 10 years in prison for the crimes. 

The Daily Mail has reached out to DeFoor’s representation for comment.  

Austria’s government says it is preparing a ban on “political Islam,” a move that could also prevent organisations including the Muslim Brotherhood from operating in the country.

In an interview with Vienna’s Heute newspaper, Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker said his administration intends to put forward a constitutional law targeting political Islam. “If religion is used politically, we must oppose it with all severity,” he said.

Stocker also reinforced the message on social media, writing: “Let me be clear: I do not want our children and grandchildren to grow up in an Islamic State.”

“In Austria, everyone can believe what they want and what they want. This freedom of faith is protected by our constitution. But where believers and non-believers are distinguished, where men and women are not equal, where our institutions, authorities and courts are not respected, that freedom ends. Just as we protect the practice of religion, we must protect our democracy.”

The proposal has drawn support from Integration Minister Claudia Bauer, who pledged to combat political Islam in Austria and across Europe “with all means possible, because radical Islam is the greatest danger of our time, for our Western democracy, for the freedom of girls and women and for everyone who wants to live their religion peacefully and freely.”

Austria’s Directorate of State Security and Intelligence (DSN) has specifically pointed to the Muslim Brotherhood as an example of political Islam, which it describes as efforts to inculcate Muslim practices in social and political structures with the long-term aim of establishing Sharia law or a Caliphate throughout the West.

It comes as the DSN has warned that the Muslim Brotherhood allegedly infiltrated the ranks of the DERAD association, which is supposedly intended to serve as a deradicalisation network. As a result of the apparent infiltration, the Interior Ministry has removed the DERAD from the government’s network of extremist prevention and deradicalisation groups.

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A report last year from French intelligence found that the Muslim Brotherhood was engaged in a decades-long “Western conquest strategy” stemming back to the 1950s.

The report claimed that the group had designed a “matrix of political Islamism adapted to be established” in Western nations, primarily through the infiltration of government and other societally significant institutions.

The intel paper specifically pointed to Germany and Austria as being other major hotspots for Muslim Brotherhood activity, given that they were “historically the first lands of establishment of the movement” in Europe.

In addition to institutional entryism, the Brotherhood was also said to be focused on enforcing strict Muslim practices within Islamic communities in the West, such as fasting during Ramadan and the veiling of women and girls. Last year, the Austrian government banned veils in schools for girls under the age of 14.

Austria, which has seen a major growth in its Muslim population in recent years, has unsurprisingly seen an increase in Islamism, with the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution revealing 306 acts of Islamic extremism being recorded last year, in addition to 129 house raids and 40 arrests.

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