Thomas is vice president of Voice of the People and director of Voice of the People Action. Kull is program director of the Program for Public Consultation.
The question of whether to continue aid for Ukraine was the focus of an innovative town hall with Rep. Jamie Raskin this month. The discussion was prompted by a new survey of Maryland’s 8th district that found majorities of both Democrats and Republicans support the U.S. continuing to provide military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Majorities also support encouraging Ukraine to engage in peace negotiations.
The survey results were released and discussed at a public consultation forum hosted by Voice of the People in Silver Spring, Md. Raskin and a subset of the respondents who took the survey discussed the topic and survey findings. This public consultation process is designed to give the public a more effective voice in their government’s policy-making. This is the third public consultation conducted with Raskin’s participation.
“I was impressed by how commanding the majorities were for both military and humanitarian assistance to people in Ukraine. It seemed like when people had all the facts and thought it through, they were strongly supportive. I had been operating on that assumption, but I wasn’t really sure. And now I really feel like I am where the bulk of where my constituents are,” Raskin said. “When you are a member of Congress you hear from a lot of people on a whole range of issues. So you are hearing from the most galvanized, mobilized, activated constituencies, but you don’t really have a clear sense of whether that is a representative cross-section of where people are when they think it through. I believe in the wisdom of big crowds of people.”
The survey of a representative sample of 604 district residents was conducted by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation. The U.S. continuing to provide military aid to Ukraine, including equipment, training, and intelligence, was favored by a bipartisan majority of 64 percent. A majority of Republicans were in favor (58 percent), as were Democrats (68 percent).
The U.S. continuing to provide humanitarian aid to Ukraine for food, shelter, health care, and infrastructure was even more popular with 77 percent in favor. Seven in 10 Republicans (69 percent ) and eight in 10 Democrats (81 percent) were in favor.
At the forum, constituent Mona Galpin explained her point of view: “For the most part we are sending old planes, old tanks, old ammunition. Things that are out of date anyway. If Ukraine can have it and use it before it expires, it gives us manufacturing jobs here to build new planes and technology. I also think that humanitarian aid is very important. These Ukrainians didn’t ask for this. Russia just came in shooting. I try to visualize if it were happening here. What if Mexico decided to take Texas?”
In the lively discussion, local resident April Stafford was concerned about the fiscal implications: “The basic man on the street sees all this money going out to other countries, and we aren’t thinking about GDPs of this country or whatever. We’re seeing we have lost revenue at home, and we are throwing it to other countries. People think of their families first.”
The decision of whether to continue providing military aid was not an easy one for residents. Each of the arguments for and against were found convincing by a bipartisan majority. Survey respondents were given the opportunity to share their thoughts. One respondent who favored aid stated: "The possibility of this war leading to a direct U.S.-Russia confrontation with a possible nuclear threat is quite real. However, further empowering Putin's expansionist authoritarianism is a more proximate danger and must be curtailed before the former scenario is more likely."
Respondents were asked whether “the US should or should not encourage Ukraine to enter into negotiations with Russia, whether or not Russia first commits to withdraw from all of Ukraine.” A majority of respondents (60 percent) said the United States should encourage negotiations, including a small majority of Democrats (55 percent), and over eight in 10 Republicans (82 percent).
Most respondents sympathized with both sides of this debate over whether to encourage Ukraine to enter negotiations, with each pro and con argument found convincing by a bipartisan majority. One respondent who favored the proposal said they did so because "Ukraine will not be able to play the long game in war against Russia." Another, who opposed negotiations, said: "This is a hard one, because we don't want a forever war."
The 604 people who participated in the online survey went through a process called a “ policymaking simulation.” Respondents are provided a briefing, presented with pro and con arguments, and then asked to register their policy views. The content is reviewed by experts on each side of the issue to ensure accuracy. Policymaking simulations are developed by the Program for Public Consultation.
Every public consultation we host focuses on a policy topic, such as the Ukraine War. Citizens are briefed beforehand and come to the forum equipped to have an informed, policy-focused civil dialogue with their representatives.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.