U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) walked through the shelves of pasta, olive oil, tinned fish and frozen pizzas at Fraboni’s Italian deli in Monona on Thursday as part of her statewide tour assessing how President Donald Trump’s tariffs and war in Iran are affecting small businesses. 

In May, the owners of the third-generation family business said that tariffs and increased gas prices had caused the cost of fresh tomatoes to increase about 40%. That price hike included domestically grown tomatoes because tariffs that increased the cost of imported tomatoes pushed up  demand for domestic tomatoes, while higher gas prices made even nearby crops more expensive to ship.
Store co-owner Bennett Fraboni added that his deli had done its best to avoid passing the increased cost of products on to its customers. 

“We always hope that it’s going to be a temporary increase, and that we can swallow it ourselves and not have to pass it on,” Fraboni said.

The deli, which has operated in the Madison area since 1971, sells Italian grocery items and operates a popular sandwich counter. Fraboni said that as the economy has fluctuated over the past year, he’s seen the two sides of the business move independently. When money is tight, he said, people are less likely to go out to eat, so sandwich counter sales slow but the sales of grocery items increase as people look to cook at home more. 

Baldwin said that hearing these stories from businesses across the state is especially frustrating because U.S. economic struggles are “self-inflicted.” 

Traveling the state during the Senate recess, she has heard from small business owners about the challenges they are facing because of  tariffs, trade wars and Trump’s war of choice in Iran, she said. “In many ways, they describe a very chaotic environment — volatile — and recognize that a lot of these things that are causing challenges for our small businesses are choices that this administration has made.”

Democrats across the country are  pushing a message about “affordability” and highlighting voters’ worries about high prices. While Congress doesn’t usually have a simple policy solution for lowering the prices of household expenses, Baldwin said if Democrats take control they can immediately act to end Trump’s tariffs and the Iran war. 

“The type of policies that this president has engaged in are extremely harmful to the consumer and to our small businesses and to our farmers who are producing these products,” Baldwin said.

WASHINGTON — For the second time in as many weeks, a War Powers Resolution aimed at curbing President Donald Trump’s war with Iran failed to pass the U.S. Senate Thursday.

The vote breakdown, 49-50, fell along familiar lines as previous War Powers votes, with Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine supporting the measure. 

Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted no, as he’s done in just over a dozen similar measures.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., continues to be absent while in medical rehab.

A similar War Powers Resolution to rein in Trump’s military conflict in Iran passed in the U.S. House on July 23, but failed in the Senate — both led by Republican majorities.

War heats up

The regional war reignited yet again this week after Trump ordered retaliatory strikes Tuesday, along with Saudi Arabia’s armed forces, on Iran-backed militias in eastern Iraq. The strikes on “multiple terrorist logistics and weapons sites” were in response to Iranian drone attacks on U.S. forces in the region, according to U.S. Central Command.

Trump told Fox News on Wednesday, “We are going to beat the f—– s—- out of them.”

The United States launched a “heavy wave” of strikes on Iranian military sites beginning at 10 p.m. Eastern Wednesday “in response to yesterday’s attempted missile attacks on U.S. forces,” according to U.S. Central Command.

The cost of oil jumped to just over $90 a barrel Wednesday in response to renewed fighting and a continued chokehold on traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, where one-fifth of the world’s petroleum traveled prior to the U.S. and Israel launching the war in late February. 

This means Americans are again paying more for fuel. According to AAA, the U.S. national average for a gallon of regular gasoline rose to $4.09 Thursday.

Before the volley of strikes began again, Trump had announced a pause, after the U.S. and Iran traded rocket fire for nearly two weeks following the collapse of ceasefire talks. 

Service members killed

The president on July 22 attended the dignified transfer, in which the remains of soldiers are transferred from an aircraft arriving from the theater of operations back to the United States, for four U.S. service members killed as a result of the conflict with Iran.

Three of the service members were killed July 17 and July 18 in an Iranian strike at a U.S. airbase in Jordan, and a fourth was killed during a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone July 19 at a U.S. base in Iraq. 

The most recent deaths of U.S. soldiers in the conflict bring the total killed to 18, while the number of injured increased to 653.

But the Pentagon does not recognize the four most recent deaths among those in the Iran war, dubbed by the administration as Operation Epic Fury. 

Instead, the Pentagon is categorizing the latest deaths and injuries as casualties of “overseas operations starting July 7, 2026.”

The administration is asking Congress for an additional $67 billion for the war in Iran. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Senate appropriators July 21 that the war has already cost $37.5 billion.