This is the May 4, 2026, edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“You know we’re in a war.”
— President Donald Trump, just hours after telling members of Congress he doesn’t need their authorization for the Iran war because the conflict is in a ceasefire
JOE’S NOTE
The poll numbers are an irresistible force. This war with Iran is an immovable object. And Donald Trump is caught between them.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll released yesterday finds 62% of Americans disapprove of Trump — the highest of his presidency. Gas is averaging $4.46 a gallon. And just 23% approve of his handling of the cost of living.
Twenty-three percent.
The New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, and Gulf allies are all saying the same thing: Finish the job in Iran.
And while Trump’s cratering poll numbers would make most politicians cut and run, leaving Iran now would be the geopolitical equivalent of jumping from a frying pan directly into a raging fire.
Does Donald Trump really want his legacy to be a nuclear Iran with far more atomic material than it had in the Obama era? Or the Strait of Hormuz under the new ownership of the Revolutionary Guard?
This international crisis is brought to you exclusively by this White House.
On Friday, Trump told Congress the war in Iran has “terminated.” That same day, he told reporters Iran can never have a nuclear weapon — because “we’re in a war.”
Trump‘s manic misstatements may work in American politics, but they won’t get the job done in Iran.
When a president is at war, he needs advisors who understand the issues better than he does. And Trump desperately needs a trusted voice that can walk into the Oval Office and tell the president what he does not want to hear.
Instead, the 47th president listened to Pete Hegseth, Lindsey Graham, and Benjamin Netanyahu before taking America into war.
They may have won the debate, but now America is at risk of losing this war — even if Iran never wins a single battle.
CHART OF THE DAY
Source: Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll of 2,056 U.S. adults, conducted April 24-28, 2026, +/- 2%; Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll of 1,269 U.S. adults, conducted April 24-28, 2026, +/- 2.2%
ABORTION ON THE BALLOT
The Supreme Court this morning temporarily halted a lower court ruling that blocked virtual access to abortion medication. But the fight is far from over — and the politics couldn’t be worse for Republicans six months before the midterms.
A federal appeals court on Friday blocked mail and telehealth access to mifepristone nationwide, effectively reinstating a requirement to obtain the pill in person. The stakes are enormous: Roughly 2 out of 3 U.S. abortions in 2023 were medication abortions, and nearly 30% of abortions in the first half of 2025 were provided through telehealth, up from just 5% in 2022.
Justice Samuel Alito’s order holds until at least May 11, when the full court weighs in.
Meanwhile, MS NOW’s Elise Jordan says the politics are clear.
“Sixty to 70% of Americans support first-trimester abortion,” she told “Morning Joe” today. “The courts risk being out of step with public opinion, and it can only hurt Trump, because it’s going to be his justices that ultimately decide.”
ON THIS DATE
On May 4, 1970, Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on student demonstrators during an anti-war protest at Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine others.This image, John Filo‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph, captures the moment after a guardsman shot and killed student Jeffrey Miller.
A CONVERSATION ABOUT THE IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN
Donald Trump swept back into the White House with the promise of launching the largest deportation force in history. In her new book, “Undue Process: The Inside Story of Trump’s Mass Deportation Program,” NBC News senior Homeland Security correspondent Julia Ainsley takes readers inside the administration to show how hard-liners like Stephen Miller and Tom Homan are carrying out that agenda — and what it has actually delivered.
JL: Julia, you’ve covered immigration since 2014. What made 2025 different?
JA: What I noticed was a dizzying pace of change. This book walks through the undoing of due process — pushing back on courts, allowing people to go into homes without a judicial warrant, targeting children for deportation, telling ICE officers they don’t even need to fill out a worksheet before making an arrest.
That machine has cooled off, but its pieces are still there. An ICE official told me last week they were told to cool things off before the midterms — but that if Republicans do well, they’ll be able to ramp it back up afterward.
JL: Tell us about the women taken to the CECOT detention center on false premises.
JA: Eight women were put on those planes. The flight stopped in Guatemala for hours — meaning the U.S. government told a federal judge it couldn’t turn the planes around because they were in El Salvador’s custody, which wasn’t even true yet.
The men were forced to sign papers claiming they were gang members so they could be turned over under the Alien Enemies Act. One woman who tried to speak to her husband was pulled back by her hair.
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, actually told Trump that he wouldn’t admit women into CECOT. It was Bukele’s policy — not America’s — that kept those women out of a prison from which they would have had no contact with the outside world.
JL: Tell us about how Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration policy, wields his power.
JA: So much of this comes from flashpoints of anger. Miller doesn’t think the numbers are high enough, so he ups the ante on daily arrests. In one meeting, he said, “You all know what an illegal looks like. No more trying to find criminals on your list. No more going after targets. Go to Home Depot parking lots, go to 7-Elevens, find people who you think are illegal.”
A month later, the Supreme Court said that was OK — ruling it wasn’t profiling if agents were looking at more than skin color, like language or whether someone worked a low-income job.
JL: And what’s the culture like inside DHS right now?
JA: A lot of DHS employees I spoke to had the attitude of “I’m going to keep my head down and keep pushing forward with these policies, whether I agree with them morally or not.”
That’s the culture of fear propagated by Kristi Noem and her right-hand man Corey Lewandowski.
JL: Talk to us about what they have accomplished so far.
JA: People have defined Trump 2.0’s immigration agenda as “ruthless efficiency.” Really, this was ruthless — but not very efficient. It put spectacle over substance.
Of 13,000 immigrants in the United States who are nondetained and convicted of homicide, only about 2,000 have been arrested. Tom Homan told me this: It’s much cheaper to go after noncriminals because these are people taking their kids to school, showing up for their ICE appointments, going to court to make their asylum claims.
When it comes to the “worst of the worst,” I think people would be sorely disappointed to look at those numbers and see who they’ve actually deported.
This conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.
EXTRA HOT TEA
17,000
— The approximate number of jobs lost after Spirit Airlines shut down over the weekend
ONE MORE SHOT
Jockey José Ortiz celebrates with the Garland of Roses after riding Golden Tempo to victory in the 152nd Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in Louisville on Saturday.
CATCH UP ON MORNING JOE
The post There’s a reason no president chose to go into Iran for 47 years appeared first on MS NOW.
