Month: June 2025

They really hate you

One doesn’t need Harry Litman, the former former U.S. Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General, to tell you that the MAGA administration is gunning for blue states. Literally.

What’s happening in Los Angeles County is proof enough of that. There was never any need to put National Guard and Marines in the streets there. Donald Trump sat on his butt while far more of his MAGA horde battled police and sacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 than protested ICE raids in southern California. Los Angeles was never in flames like Trump’s hyperventilating flacks alleged. But for Trump, a couple of burning Waymo taxis was all the pretext he needed for setting a precedent he could apply anywhere, anytime.

Litman wrote last week at The New Republic:

Indeed, earlier this week he issued a Truth Social message proclaiming: “We must expand effort[s] to detain and deport aliens in America’s largest cities.” He continued: “ICE Officers are herewith ordered, by notice of this TRUTH, to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History. We must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside.”

Why those cities? According to Trump: “These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens.”

It’s a breathtaking statement from an American president. The various accusations against Democrats are patently false. But even setting that aside, exploiting a supposed national crisis to demonize political opponents is antithetical to a president’s role in moments of national crisis.

But it’s not just the Democratic Party in Trump’s sights. It is the infrastructure and institutions that underlie the American middle class that arose in the aftermath of World War II. That less stratified America, with its broader prosperity, access to better education and expanded minority rights, threatened the tidy order of redlining, Jim Crow, and the “natural order” of white-male control. Trump-MAGA means to burn down the post-war order like the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

An extinction-level event for higher education

Astra Taylor and Eleni Schirmer write this morning atThe New Republic that Trump’s reconciliation bill represents “an extinction event for higher education as we know it.” The measure “weaponizes working-class families’ reliance on debt to finance their college dreams with such intensity that not only will it push millions to the financial brink, it will push them out of higher education altogether.”

The bill’s effect will be to “cement the stereotype of higher education as an elite institution into an ironclad reality.” What better way to restore an old caste system than by limiting upward mobility and gutting the American Dream? Who knows? Maybe white-columned mansions will come back into fashion across the South.

Yes, it will re-impoverish America and further weaken our world standing (already in the toilet). But what the left refuses to acknowledge is that some of our neighbors would rather be worse off economically than see Irresponsibles get ahead. For them, politics is not about money. It’s about social dominance.

Taylor and Schirmer write:

In the words of influential conservative activist Christopher Rufo, “Reforming the student loan programs could put the whole university sector into a significant recession” and state of “existential terror.” The goal is to use economic policy to impose an unpopular and stifling ideological agenda, exacted by punitive student debt. 

The rest is details. The bottom line is conservative social control. They hate you. They really hate you.

The reconciliation bill threatens to supercharge their oligarchic cause. Rising costs will reinforce the perception that education is the domain of an out-of-touch elite, prompting many to abandon or abort their academic dreams, which will resegregate broad swaths of society. The threat of mounting debt will discourage people from studying their passions or pursuing careers in public service, steering them instead toward the private sector or the military. It will weaken the general bargaining position of workers, who will be less able to use education as a path of upward mobility, while making the labor force more docile; workers burdened by debt are less likely to strike. By funneling student debtors’ ballooning payments into Wall Street coffers and regressive tax cuts, it will ensure that social and economic disparities become more entrenched.

Ladies? It’s barefoot and pregnant again for you. Workers? It’s uneducated dependency on the company store again. (Cue Tennessee Ernie Ford.)

The good old days will be here again! Or in Trump-speak, THE GOOD OLD DAYS!!!

Fire up your laptops and let your MOCs know that despite Kamala Harris’s loss last fall, you’re not going back.

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Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Reports of Democrats’ death may be greatly exaggerated

All those stories about the young-uns turning conservative? I was skeptical too. Jean M. Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University, isn’t buying it either:

The Cooperative Election Study, one of the largest politically focused surveys of Americans, goes back to 2006 and just released its 2024 data. Those data aren’t perfect—they have yet to be validated against the voter file, meaning they are based on self-reported voter turnout. But they are still a much better source for studying generational shifts than data from just one year, like Shor’s….

Consistent with other reports, the CES data show that young adults (ages 18 to 29) voted for Trump in 2024 at a much higher rate than they did in 2020. The trend was especially pronounced among young men, whose support for Trump increased by 10 percentage points since 2020, compared with 6 points for young women. Although some recent polling suggests that 18-to-21-year-olds were more likely to support Trump than 22-to-29-year-olds, the CES data show the younger and older subgroups voting for Trump at near-identical rates in 2024. Young adults were also more likely to vote for Republican House candidates than in 2020, though the change was not as large as in the presidential race.

Yes, and:

… voting for a Republican candidate isn’t the same as identifying as conservative. Here is where the CES data cast doubt on the notion that Gen Z is an especially right-leaning generation. According to my analysis of the CES data, young adults have actually become less likely to identify as conservative in surveys during presidential-election years since 2008. The trend is not due to increases in the nonwhite population; fewer white young adults identified as conservative in 2024 (29 percent) than did in 2016 (33 percent).

I had familiar conversations Sunday with people of my generation about how to get more younger people engaged. It might help if the face of the party looked more like AOC and Max Frost and less like Chuck Schumer and Jim Clyburn. But it doesn’t. It might help if Democrats reached out to more Gen Z and Millennials and asked them to vote because their futures depend on it. But they don’t.

Nearly half of voters 45 and under are registered independents. Democrats’ are still using outreach strategies based primarily on turning out Democrats. Those tactics date from when Democrats were a much larger proportion of registered voters. The bulk of independents don’t even show up on their radars. Democrats are afraid to send volunteers to engage voters whom their predictive software calculates may not be solidly on their team (potential MAGAs!). And when zealous volunteers approach independents they can come on like Jehovah’s Witnesses for Democrats. Not exactly a pitch designed to appeal to people put off by party politics. Why does voting matter for them? That should be the pitch. It’s not about what they can do for your party or candidates, but about what they can do for themselves. They’re voting for a future.

Gen Z, argues Twenge, is a uniquely pessimistic generation. They “will vote for whichever party is not currently in office.” Their reflex is to “vote the bastards out … no matter which party is in power.”

Politics now is not about policy or party, but about passion. Democrats who fail to recognize that will fail to build winning coalitions going forward.

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They just decided to ignore it and dare the people to do something about it:

After President Donald Trump’s decision to strike three Iranian nuclear facilities on Saturday, administration officials are barely bothering to pretend the unprecedented — and potentially calamitous — attacks were motivated by new intelligence suggesting Iran was on the brink of having nuclear weapons. 

Just months ago, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified to Congress, in her opening statement, that the U.S. intel community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon” and had not reauthorized its nuclear weapons program.

While Trump recently publicly disputed Gabbard’s testimony, according to two administration officials with knowledge of internal deliberations in recent weeks, the president’s decision to strike was not driven by any new U.S. intelligence on Iran.

“There is no intel,” says one of the officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. “Nothing new, that I’m aware of… The president is protecting the United States and our interests, [but] the intelligence assessments have not really changed from what they were before.”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, confirmed Saturday night that American intelligence assessments on Iran have not changed. “I was briefed on the intelligence last week. Iran posed no imminent threat of attack to the United States,” he wrote on social media. “Iran was not close to building a deliverable nuclear weapon.” 

We’ve been down this road before and not that long ago. But even Bush and Cheney spent a year trying to gather international and domestic support for the invasion of Iraq and even got an authorization to do it from the congress. The manipulation of the intelligence and the massive propaganda campaign worked temporarily but didn’t last as reality bit. And considering that it happened right after 9/11 when the whole world was freaked out and the president had a very high approval rating, Bush a lot more room to maneuver anyway.

None of that is happening right now. Trump is an unpopular lame duck, surrounded by amateurs and sycophants, and nobody really knows why he’s doing this. He doesn’t either, unless it’s just a “wag the dog” move or a way to consolidate his power in the U.S. both of which may be true. Whatever the case, this whole thing is likely to go sideways in any number of directions because Trump is a fool and may have actually emboldened the right wingers in Iran and that’s not a good thing.

He really shouldn’t be saying stuff like this if he doesn’t want just that:

We have a virus stalking America and we aren’t really talking about it (NYT gift link):

He was a chiropractor by training, but in a remote part of West Texas with limited medical care, Kiley Timmons had become a first stop for whatever hurt. Ear infections. Labor pains. Oil workers who arrived with broken ribs and farmers with bulging discs. For more than a decade, Kiley, 48, had seen 20 patients each day at his small clinic located between a church and a gas station in Brownfield, population 8,500. He treated what he could, referred others to physicians and prayed over the rest.

It wasn’t until early this spring that he started to notice something unfamiliar coming through the door: aches that lingered, fevers that wouldn’t break, discolored patches of skin that didn’t make sense. At first, he blamed it on a bad flu season, but the symptoms stuck around and then multiplied. By late March, a third of his patients were telling him about relatives who couldn’t breathe. And then Kiley started coughing, too.

His wife, Carrollyn, had recently tested positive for Covid, but her symptoms eased as Kiley’s intensified. He went to a doctor at the beginning of April for a viral panel, but every result came back negative. The doctor decided to test for the remote possibility of measles, since there was a large outbreak spreading through a Mennonite community 40 miles away, but Kiley was vaccinated.

“I feel like I’m dying,” Kiley texted a friend. He couldn’t hold down food or water. He had already lost 10 pounds. His chest went numb, and his arms began to tingle. His oxygen was dropping dangerously low when he finally got the results.

“Positive for measles,” he wrote to his sister, in mid-April. “Just miserable. I can’t believe this.”

[…]

But what frightened Kiley more than the potential spread was the severity of the disease: About one in five unvaccinated people with measles will be hospitalized, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As many as one in 20 children contracts a secondary pneumonia infection. More than one in 1,000 dies.

Maybe I’m out of it but I haven’t heard before that the measles outbreak we are experiencing is so much more severe. And guess what?

Measles stops spreading when 95 percent of a community is immune, but national vaccination rates for children have fallen to less than 92 percent. In parts of West Texas, they’ve dropped below 80.

They believed snake oil salesmen and faith healers:

I feel like I’ve been lied to,” Kiley told his wife as his fever rose to 104 degrees. He tried to manage his symptoms at home with cod liver oil and vitamin D, supplements endorsed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. health secretary. He isolated himself in the living room to avoid infecting his four children and coughed and dry-heaved his way through the night.

“I’m just trying to breathe at the moment,” he texted one relative.

One morning about a week into his illness, Carrollyn walked into the living room and saw Kiley lying on the couch. His head was almost purple. A rash was blooming across his chest, and his mouth was dotted with dozens of white sores. She tested his oxygen level. It read 85 percent — low enough to endanger his vital organs. She tucked the monitor away to keep Kiley from panicking. He was hazy and confused, so she helped him into a fresh shirt and drove him to the emergency room, where he was quarantined and given oxygen, breathing treatments and X-rays to monitor his stomach cramps.

He stayed in isolation for the next 40 hours, too sick to rest and too exhausted to talk, until he rolled over and saw a new message on his phone, from Carrollyn.

It was about their kids. Read the whole thing to see the horror they visited them because they refused to vaccinate. Let’s just say it’s not the fun and games Bobby Jr describes at Hickory Hill when he was a kid with measles. They were hospitalized and almost died. And now they’re left with ongoing illnesses caused by what’s known as measles  “immune amnesia.”

The article goes on to chronicle the experience of a different religious fanatic doctor and “wellness” weirdo who believes, as does our HHS Secretary, that measles and other diseases are all the result of poor diet and spiritual rot. He observed a whole bunch of kids getting much sicker than he’d been led to believe in the textbooks that measles would bring but it didn’t change his mind. He just kept praying and giving them cod liver oil.

This would be a nightmare in any case. But now that we’ve got the U.S. Government promoting this throwback, medieval bullshit it’s becoming a serious crisis.

A corollary to “I grab ’em by the pussy and they let me do it because I’m a star…”

That’s how bullies always operate. On the schoolyard, the big bully shoves the smaller kid to the ground and takes his lunch money. If the kid tries to fight back the big kid gives himself permission to beat the shit out of him.

Like all bullies, Trump wants Iran to say, “Please stop! We’ll do anything you want! Just please don’t hurt me!” so he can rub it in and humiliate them, which is his ultimate joy in life. They are not going to do that. What they will do  remains a mystery but they’ll do something. The smart move would be to inflict some economic harm rather than violence. Trump would have a much harder time dealing with that. But they’re weakened, unstable and pretty nuts. It could go either way.

Vance: I empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East. I understand the concern, but the difference is that back then we had dumb presidents pic.twitter.com/zv1NfR580J

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 22, 2025

Compare and contrast:

I’m sure MAGA will buy that this orange freak in a baseball hat is a super genius. Will the rest of the country?

Dan Pfeiffer suggests that this operation isn’t going to result in the usual rally round the flag reaction:

Traditionally, military action has led to a spike in a president’s approval rating. Both Presidents Bush saw their numbers soar to a gobsmacking 90 percent after the Gulf War and 9/11, respectively. Now, a handful of military strikes in Iran is not akin to invading Iraq or responding to the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil. However, Barack Obama’s approval rating rose by about nine points after the operation to kill Osama bin Laden.

This is a very fluid and dangerous situation. We don’t know how Iran will respond or what happens next. But there are several reasons to believe that bombing Iran won’t help Trump’s approval ratings.

First, the so-called “rally around the flag” effect has diminished with every subsequent president. America has become much more polarized, which means there are fewer and fewer voters willing to say they approve of a president they didn’t vote for.

Second, the American people do not want U.S. military action against Iran. In the latest Economist/YouGov poll, only 16% of Americans support U.S. involvement in the conflict between Iran and Israel.

Third, an approval bump usually requires consolidating one’s base. That’s not what this did. Military action in Iran has divided the Republican base. While it’s mostly bullshit, Trump has sold himself as an isolationist who wants to pull the U.S. out of foreign entanglements. In the Economist poll, a majority of Republicans oppose the action Trump just took.

Finally, Trump’s numbers are down because a bunch of people who voted for him in 2024 have buyer’s remorse — and most of that regret is rooted in the economy. It’s hard to see voters who are mad at Trump about tariffs or tax cuts for the rich coming back to him because he’s put us on the brink of another misbegotten war in the Middle East.

He points out that Trump’s numbers go down when he’s in the news:

His polling dips line up with three news cycles — the intense focus on DOGE cuts, the tariffs, and more recently, the deployment of troops to Los Angeles to combat the protests.

This makes intuitive sense. The electorate can be divided by news consumption. The first group consumes political news voraciously — they watch cable news, listen to political podcasts, and subscribe to national news outlets like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. By definition, this group includes everyone reading this newsletter; it is overwhelmingly college-educated, more Democratic than Republican, and almost every one of them is a fully committed partisan.

The other group pays very little attention to politics and news. They see some political content on social media, but do not actively seek it out or opt into the ongoing political conversation that dominates most of our lives. Because they primarily get their political news from social media, they only see content when a story breaks out of the political news bubble and goes viral among the broader public. The three storylines I mentioned above are instances where political news truly went viral and started reaching non-political news consumers. When they heard things about Trump, his approval ratings began to drop.

This finding is a reminder to all Democrats to be as loud as possible at all times; and it’s a reminder that our target audience is not the people we encounter on X.

He goes on to point out that immigration is NOT a winner for Trump and that it’s also good for Democrats to keep the heat on that issue:

Immigration is Trump’s best issue, but that doesn’t mean it performs well for him. Once again using Nate Silver’s model, Trump is nearly four points under water on immigration.

The L.A. protests weren’t a winner for him either, despite all the Democratic handwringing about Real Americans hving a fit over alleged “violent protesters.” He points to this from G. Elliot Morris:

The Trump administration is underwater in 11 out of 12 poll questions related to immigration, deportations, and the LA protests this week. The only poll to come up with positive results for the administration is a YouGov/Economist survey asking whether people approve, broadly, of how Trump is “handling the issue of immigration.” At +4, that represents a 3-point decline from the +7 reading in YouGov’s poll last week.

Pfeiffer suggests that by sending in the marines, Trump broke through to the voters who are usually not paying attention.

I assume that people will hear that we’ve gone to war with iran. Many of them won’t know the difference between Iran and Iraq and may think we’re back at war with the latter. Others won’t have a clue. But they may not be thrilled about the wholoe thing because we’ve now had about 15 years of “no more wars.”

Maybe…

🚨 After Iran's statement that "if the United States enters the war, we will shut down the Strait of Hormuz" — here’s the current situation of daily ship traffic through the strait:

Around 70 to 100 oil and commercial ships pass through the strait every day.
It’s the world’s… pic.twitter.com/whmNgfcTpI

— Defence Index (@Defence_Index) June 21, 2025

After Iran’s statement that “if the United States enters the war, we will shut down the Strait of Hormuz” — here’s the current situation of daily ship traffic through the strait: Around 70 to 100 oil and commercial ships pass through the strait every day. It’s the world’s most strategic waterway, carrying nearly 20% of global oil supply. Any closure could severely impact global markets, energy prices, and Gulf trade.

On top of the tariffs this could be quite something. But there is a silver lining for Dear Leader. This would give him a way to blame something else for the economy going south. And he can really bring the hammer down domestically — terrorism, dotcha know. (He’ll no doubt claim that the day laborers t Home Depot are all members of the iranian sleeper cells.)

It is all bullshit. Just like Iraq all over again.

Trump’s crack counter-terrorism team:

The inexperienced 22-year-old reportedly tasked by Donald Trump with tackling U.S. extremism was working as a neighborhood gardener just five years ago and in a grocery store as recently as August 2023, the Daily Beast can reveal.

Thomas Fugate, who graduated from the University of Texas at San Antonio just 12 months ago, is currently heading up the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships at the DHS, as first reported by ProPublica Tuesday. The center, also known as CP3, plays a vital role supporting nationwide efforts to combat terrorism and hate-fueled violence.

But according to the youngster’s LinkedIn page, Fugate has almost no experience in this field—and in 2020 was working as a self-employed ‘Landscape Business Owner.’ There isn’t much else on his resumé to suggest Fugate has the requisite skills to weed out terrorists. Prior to his work as a gardener—while studying for a degree in politics and law—Fugate worked at an H-E-B supermarket in Austin, Texas, as a ‘Cross Functional Team Member.’

Since leaving college, Fugate has had a meteoric rise in the political world, having served as an “advance team member” on President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, according to his LinkedIn page. An avowed Republican, he also interned at the Heritage Foundation, the think tank behind Project 2025, and for Texas Representatives Terry Wilson and Steve Allison.

I think we can all feel just great about this, considering:

Richard Haass, who advised Colin Powell and George W. Bush in the build-up to the Iraq War, warned that the Iranians had many levers they could pull to hurt the United States. “If you start going up that escalation ladder, they can act asymmetrically, as we said, with terrorism, militias, hostage-taking. It’s what they do,” he told CNN.

The former chair of the Council on Foreign Relations pointed out that Trump was no longer in control of the ramifications after dropping up to six never-before-used “bunker buster” bombs on the Iranian nuclear facility deep underground at Fordow. “We’ve got to prepare for the worst,” he said. “These are unprecedented times.”

Iranian state TV was quick to threaten major retaliation “Mr. Trump, you started it, and we will end it… Every American citizen or military personnel in the region is now a target.” The government-controlled network also aired a graphic of U.S. bases “within the fire range of Iran.”

While traditional Iranian military responses to Israel’s attacks in the current conflict have been largely ineffective, the devastating asymmetric battles fought in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate the scope of potential attacks on American targets. So too did the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which killed more than 1,000 people 18 months ago, sparking the current eruption of violence in the Middle East.

I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. There are tons of grown ups around to handle the real counter-terrorism stuff, right? Well, except for all the FBI and DHS who’ve been pulled off of counter-terrorism to help ICE harass and terrorize the Latino gardeners and nannies. They have much more important work to do.

Undisciplined? Untrained? Criminals?

Garrett Graff has seen the clips on social media. Supposed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operatives, ununiformed, many in masks and carrying tricked-out rifles, some drawing weapons against unarmed civilians. He writes on his Substack that these supposed officers have begun resisting legal oversight efforts.

The New York Times reported last week:

Under federal law, members of Congress can make unannounced oversight visits to immigration facilities that “detain or otherwise house aliens.” Lawmakers are not required to provide “prior notice of the intent to enter a facility” to conduct oversight, though members of their staff must request a visit at least 24 hours in advance.

But in guidance released this month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement asks members of Congress to give at least 72 hours notice for a visit to its facilities. Asked about the policy, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, went even further, suggesting that federal officials would not be allowed entry unless they provided a week’s notice.

In essence, your stinking laws do not apply to us.

Graff observes:

ICE in just a few weeks has transformed itself into the closest thing that the US has ever had to a “secret police,” with more seemingly culturally in common with the Klan nightriders of Reconstruction than their federal agency brethren like the FBI or ATF.

What really worries me about ICE’s collective actions nationwide, though, is bigger than any single raid or social media post — what worries me is that what we’re witnessing nationwide are not the actions of an agency that believes it will ever be subject to meaningful oversight or legal authority ever again.

This is not an agency that is treating members of Congress as if it will ever be held to account by the men and women who control its budget.

This is not an agency that believes that any of its actions on the streets will be subject to meaningful review by judicial authorities — or that any of its actions will be litigated in the courts.

This is not an agency that believes that any of its actions will be subject to meaningful review by the DHS inspector general, either for policy violations or criminal use-of-force abuses, nor reviewed by US attorneys or federal prosecutors at any level.

This is not an agency leadership that believes that anyone in government — at the Justice Department, the White House, or DHS — currently cares about public perception, misconduct, or violations of civil rights and civil liberties.

And this is not an agency that believes that Democrats will ever be back in charge.

That’s what should terrify us.

This episode below is just one in which masked men illegally threaten observers with weapons. This is an excessive use of force by an officer, potentially opening them to a lawsuit. “Drawing a firearm must be reported on a use of force form. A supervisor will review the incident,” for Detroit Police, Baltimore, and other departments. What are the chances these masked “agents” are conforming to such policies and reporting their uses of force? Or are they simply drunk on power, unleashed by DHS, and feeling free to do their worst?

ICE agent points gun directly at the head of innocent civilian—just for taking picture of his license plate.He drew his gun with one hand—while fumbling to open the car door with the other.The "agent" did not seem to be aware someone else was already recording his vehicle.Pasadena, California.

— LongTime🤓FirstTime👨‍💻 (@longtimehistory.bsky.social) 2025-06-19T19:15:46.536Z

The clip above is from Wednesday (KTLA):

Frightening images out of Pasadena show a plainclothes federal law enforcement officer at a stoplight jumping out of his vehicle and drawing his weapon on a person attempting to photograph his license plate.

Details are limited and the exact circumstances of the incident are unknown, but the potentially deadly confrontation occurred Wednesday morning at around the same time federal immigration agents carried out an operation at a bus stop near Orange Grove Boulevard and Los Robles Avenue.

Masked plainclothes agents donning bulletproof vests were seen questioning two men sitting on a bench at around 6:30 a.m., eventually arresting them and a handful of other day laborers.

Pasadena Police are investigating.

Here is another example of a masked “ICE” officer drawing a weapon on an observer.

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Welcome to the Police States of America.

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SecDef Weekend claims success

Trump’s “two weeks” window for deciding U.S. actions against Iran was a ruse:

Iran vowed to defend itself after the United States military joined Israel’s war against Iran early Sunday morning by dropping bombs and firing missiles at three key nuclear sites in the country. The strikes prompted fears of more dangerous escalations across the Middle East.

President Trump said the objective was the “destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity.” He claimed success, saying in a brief, televised address from the White House that the nuclear facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated.”

Trump had no bomb damage assessments when he made that claim last night. If the strikes had “completely and totally” failed, he’d have said the same thing.

Defense Secretary Weekend Pete Hegseth just gave a press statement just now to prove he is good on TV. That’s what Trump hired him for, after all. Hegseth claimed “the highest of operational security” this time. Any Signal texts involved will surface later.

Brace for Iranian retaliation.

The Atlantic:

The operation was closely coordinated with Israel, now a week into its own highly effective bombing campaign on Iranian nuclear and military sites, a person familiar with the planning told us. After the U.S. strikes concluded, Trump spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long pushed the United States to act.

The operation was closely coordinated with Israel, now a week into its own highly effective bombing campaign on Iranian nuclear and military sites, a person familiar with the planning told us. After the U.S. strikes concluded, Trump spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long pushed the United States to act.

Trump chose to initiate his air assault after he was impressed by the success of Israel’s offensive, which has further eroded Iran’s air-defense capability, and came to believe that “a little push from us would make it incredibly successful,” an ally of the president who spoke with him about the decision told us.

U.S. officials told us that Trump had genuinely wanted to strike a nuclear deal with Iran—seven years after he’d ripped up the agreement reached by former President Barack Obama—but had come to an impasse with the Iranians over the issue of the enrichment of uranium. Washington had demanded that Tehran give up enrichment entirely or else submit to strict American and international supervision; Iran had refused those conditions. Some officials held out hope that U.S. bombing will change Iran’s calculus and force its leaders to negotiate on the full dismantlement of the nuclear program. In the short term, however, they predicted that Iran will resort to asymmetric warfare, deploying cyberattacks and other operations that could potentially draw the United States further into the conflict.

Trump launched these strikes now because he tore up the agreeement struck by Barack Obama out of pique. And likely because Netanyahu “worked” Trump’s fragile ego. Trump saw success from Israel’s attacks and jumped to claim a “win” for himself. Somehow escalation will be all Democrats’ fault.

General Dan Caine, Trump’s chair of the Joint Chiefs, told a press conference moments ago that all targets were successfully struck, no Iranian fighters flew, and no shots were fired from Iranian missile batteries. Battle damage assessments are in progress.

The New York Times:

Hegseth dodged a question about what if any new U.S. intelligence indicated that Iran had decided to develop a nuclear weapon. Israel has justified its attack on Iran by saying Tehran was rushing to break out a weapon. U.S. intelligence had not reached such a conclusion.

“A senior US official acknowledged that the B-2 attack on the Fordo site did not destroy the heavily fortified facility but severely damaged it,” the Times reported minutes later.

Obliterated then.

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