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      Trump, Iran and the Specter of Iraq: ‘We Bought All the Happy Talk’

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      President Trump is pondering swift military action in Iran. There were similar expectations that the war in Iraq would be quick and triumphant.A little more than 22 years ago, Washington was on edge as a president stood on the precipice of ordering an invasion of Baghdad. The expectation was that it would be a quick, triumphant “mission accomplished.”By the time the United States withdrew nearly nine years and more than 4,000 American and 100,000 Iraqi deaths later, the war had become a historic lesson of miscalculation and unintended consequences.The specter of Iraq now hangs over a deeply divided, anxious Washington. President Trump, who campaigned against America’s “forever wars,” is pondering a swift deployment of American military might in Iran. This time there are not some 200,000 American troops massed in the Middle East, or antiwar demonstrations around the world. But the sense of dread and the unknown feels in many ways the same.“So much of this is the same story told again,” said Vali R. Nasr, an Iranian American who is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “Once upon a time we didn’t know better, and we bought all the happy talk about Iraq. But every single assumption proved wrong.”There are many similarities. The Bush administration and its allies saw the invasion of Iraq as a “cakewalk” and promised that U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators. There were internal disputes over the intelligence that justified the war. A phalanx of neoconservatives pushed hard for the chance to get rid of Saddam Hussein, the longtime dictator of Iraq. And America held its breath waiting for President George W. Bush to announce a final decision.Today Trump allies argue that coming to the aid of Israel by dropping 30,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs on Fordo, Iran’s most fortified nuclear site, could be a one-off event that would transform the Middle East. There is a dispute over intelligence between Tulsi Gabbard, Mr. Trump’s director of national intelligence, who said in March that Iran was not actively building a nuclear weapon, and Mr. Trump, who retorted on Tuesday that “I don’t care what she said.” Iran, he added, was in fact close to a nuclear weapon. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. to Review Social Media Posts of Student and Scholar Visa Applicants

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      The State Department is restarting the processing of visa applications from students and visiting scholars, but is screening for “hostility” toward the United States.The State Department plans to review the social media accounts of foreign citizens who apply for student and visiting scholar visas as it resumes processing those applications. Applicants will be screened for perceived “hostility” toward the United States, and they will be asked to make their social media accounts “public” for the review, State Department officials said on Wednesday.All applications for F, M and J nonimmigrant visas, which are for scholarly exchanges and research, will be reviewed, the officials said.Consular officers at missions overseas are being told to look for “any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions or founding principles of the United States.” The State Department did not provide further details on how officers would define that criteria. The agency issued the guidelines after halting the processing of student and visiting scholar visas for nearly a month.The new policy appears to be the latest prong in the Trump administration’s broad assault on universities, which is focused on trying to tamp down liberal thought at the institutions. Some of President Trump’s aides say American universities need to embrace more conservative ideas and people. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      For Tennessee’s Transgender Families, Supreme Court Ruling Was Bitter, but Expected

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      The state has been a leader in the rollback of L.G.B.T.Q. rights.There had been cause for joy this June. There were events timed with Pride Month, when families and friends gathered with rainbow tattoos and flags for the annual celebration of L.G.B.T.Q. life. And there was an unexpected legal victory when a federal judge extended a temporary injunction on a federal policy requiring passports to reflect the sex on a person’s original birth certificate.Then on Wednesday, the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on transition treatment for transgender youth, dealing a bitter setback to their families and reviving fear about other limits that may come for L.G.B.T.Q. people in the state.For many transgender people, children and their families in Tennessee, it was not necessarily an unexpected outcome given the vitriol they have faced in recent years.The state has been at the forefront of a rollback on L.G.B.T.Q. rights as its General Assembly, with an entrenched Republican supermajority, has barred changes to gender identification on driver’s licenses, limited where drag shows can take place and prevented transgender students from using public school bathrooms that fit their identities.“I’m not surprised” at the ruling, said Eli Givens, who at 18 had testified against the ban. “I really want to be. Ever since I started all of this in 2023, it’s been whiplash every single day. There’s just always a new decision, someone saying something about the community.”Receiving treatment as a teenager “was a new chance at life for me,” Mx. Givens, 20, added. “I could savor things in a way I never could before. Everything kind of made sense and fell into place.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Supreme Court Case on Trans Care Ruled Against My Daughter

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      There is something incredibly surreal about finding your family at the center of a landmark Supreme Court decision, from the robes and the formality to the long, red velvet curtains behind the justices. No mother imagines that her everyday fight to do right by her child would land her there.My daughter, L.W., came out as transgender late in 2020. She was just shy of 13. Four and a half years later, she is thriving, healthy and happy after pursuing evidence-based gender-affirming care. But the very care that is improving her life became a primary political target of the Republican supermajority in our home state, Tennessee. When the legislature banned my daughter’s care in 2023, we fought back by suing the state. Today, we found out that we lost that case when the Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, to uphold Tennessee’s ban on such care.I am beside myself. Our heartfelt plea was not enough. The compelling, expert legal arguments by our lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal were not enough. I had to face my daughter and tell her that our last hope is gone. She’s angry, scared and hurt that the American system of democracy that we so put on a pedestal didn’t work to protect her.My family did not start this journey to land in Washington in front of that white marble hall of justice. We ended up there through parental and civic duty. My and my husband’s demands in our lawsuit against the ban felt quite basic: Let us do our job as parents. Let us love and care for our daughter in the best way we and our doctors know how. Don’t let our child’s very existence be a political wedge issue. Being a teenager is hard enough. Being a parent of a teenager is hard enough.Raising a transgender kid in Tennessee, we know that not everyone understands people like her or her health care — and that’s OK. We don’t need to agree on everything. But we do need our fundamental rights respected.I have devoted myself to finding our daughter consistent care in one state after another. The nightmare of our disrupted life pales in comparison to the nightmare of losing access to the health care that has allowed our daughter to thrive. After Tennessee passed its ban, we traveled to another provider in a different state. After that state passed a ban, we moved on to another one. We are now on our fourth state. The five-hour drive each way, taking time off work and school, is hard, but thankfully, we found a clinic and pharmacy that take our insurance.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ex-Yankee Is Awarded About $500,000 in Damages for Moldy Greenwich Mansion

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      Josh Donaldson, a former American League Most Valuable Player with Toronto, sued his former landlord over the conditions at his $55,000-a-month rental property.A Connecticut jury on Wednesday awarded the former New York Yankees third baseman Josh Donaldson damages that are expected to top $500,000 from the ex-landlord of his $55,000-a-month Greenwich, Conn., rental mansion, which he complained was plagued by mold and squirrels.Mr. Donaldson, 39, terminated the lease about six weeks after moving into the five-bedroom, 4,800-square-foot home in April 2022 with his now-wife, Briana, who was pregnant at the time, and their 17-month-old daughter.In a federal lawsuit filed in Connecticut in June 2022, the now-retired baseball player accused the home’s owner, Bill Grous, of breach of contract and said that the rental in Greenwich’s backcountry section was a money pit.The neighborhood, sought after for its sprawling estates and privacy, is a magnet for professional athletes, other celebrities and financiers.Mr. Donaldson, a former American League Most Valuable Player with the Toronto Blue Jays in 2015, moved into the mansion a few weeks after being traded to the Yankees from the Minnesota Twins.His two seasons in New York were rocky. Mr. Donaldson struggled to replicate his success and was suspended by Major League Baseball in May 2022 for one game for repeatedly calling Tim Anderson, who is Black and was a shortstop for the Chicago White Sox at the time, “Jackie,” a reference to Jackie Robinson. In August 2023, Mr. Donaldson was released by the Yankees.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As Trump Debates Iran Action, the Meaning of ‘America First’ Is on the Line

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      As President Trump ponders involving the United States in Israel’s attacks on Iran, the G.O.P. faces a thorny question: What does “America first” really mean?A decade ago, President Trump electrified conservatives with his promises to get the United States out of foreign entanglements and to always put — say it with me — “America first.”As he weighs involving American planes and weaponry in Israel’s attacks on Iran, a brawl has broken out in the Republican Party over what “America first” really means.I wrote today about how a swath of Trump’s base is in an uproar over the president’s increasing openness to deploying U.S. warplanes — and perhaps even 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs — against Iran in an effort to help Israel finish off its nuclear program.“Everyone is finding out who are real America First/MAGA and who were fake and just said it bc it was popular,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia posted on X over the weekend. She added, “Anyone slobbering for the U.S. to become fully involved in the Israel/Iran war is not America First/MAGA.”The anger extends well beyond Greene’s social-media account, to cable television and the podcast feeds of the likes of Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon and Candace Owens. They are passionately arguing that intervening in Iran would contravene Trump’s long-held promise to steer the nation out of, not into, foreign entanglements, and threaten to fracture his whole coalition.It’s a remarkable fight, and one that raises a bigger question about who is really the keeper of Trump’s political flame. Is it the non-interventionists who have been there from the start, or the Republican hawks — the Senator Lindsey Grahams of the world — who are now sticking by the president?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What Is a ‘Fridge Cigarette’? A New Term for Diet Coke Gains Traction.

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      The click of the can, the sound of the bubbles: The internet is reframing the humble soda as an indulgent escape.Two Sundays ago, Rachel Reno relaxed in a park in New York with a sandwich, a bag of chips and a fridge cigarette.While lounging, she posted a video of herself, with the caption: “overheard someone call Diet Coke a ‘fridge cigarette’ and nothing’s been more true to me since.”She cracked open the can and took a sip.“I feel like it’s one of those things that doesn’t need a lot of explanation,” Ms. Reno, a freelance creator in New York, said in an interview. She first heard the alternative name for a can of diet soda from a co-worker at her previous job at an advertising agency. Those who get it know that “the crack of the can is like the spark of a lighter,” she said. Then comes the sparkly sound of fizzing bubbles and the mouthfeel of that first hit, and suddenly “all the worries and cares in the world go away.”Crucially, having a soda is the equivalent of stepping outside for a few minutes for a smoke break. It’s an excuse to “take a moment,” Ms. Reno said.

      @reallyrachelreno time for a crispy ciggy in the summer @Diet Coke #fyp #dietcoke ♬ Cruel Summer – Taylor Swift Ms. Reno’s video in the park has been viewed more than three million times and received almost 300,000 likes, with many people commenting on how accurate that term is. It has inspired others to use the expression, capturing not just a shift in perception of soda and cigarettes but also a collective search for a breather, as Casey Lewis, founder and writer of the internet-culture newsletter After School, described it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Justice Dept. to Cut Gun-Sale Inspectors by Two-Thirds as It Moves to Downsize A.T.F.

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      The move is part of the Trump administration’s effort to defang and downsize the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.The Justice Department plans to slash the number of inspectors who monitor federally licensed gun dealers by two-thirds, sharply limiting the government’s already crimped capacity to identify businesses that sell guns to criminals, according to budget documents.The move, part of the Trump administration’s effort to defang and downsize the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, comes as the department considers merging the A.T.F. and the Drug Enforcement Administration. It follows a rollback of Biden-era regulations aimed at stemming the spread of deadly homemade firearms, along with other gun control measures.The department plans to eliminate 541 of the estimated 800 investigators responsible for determining whether federal dealers are following federal law and regulations intended to keep guns away from traffickers, straw purchasers, criminals and those found to have severe mental illness, according to a budget summary quietly circulated last week.Department officials estimated the reductions would reduce “A.T.F.’s capacity to regulate the firearms and explosives industries by approximately 40 percent” in the fiscal year starting in November — even though the staff cuts represent two-thirds of the inspection work force. The cuts are needed to meet the White House demand that A.T.F. cut nearly a third from its budget of $1.6 billion.News of the plan came as a shock to a work force already reeling from months of disruption. Several frontline agency staff members, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said the cuts would lead to hundreds of layoffs and effectively end the A.T.F.’s role as a serious regulator of gun sales, if they are not reversed by the White House or Congress.“These are devastating cuts to law enforcement funding and would undermine A.T.F.’s ability to keep communities safe from gun violence,” said John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit advocacy group founded by the former mayor of New York Michael R. Bloomberg. “This budget would be a win for unscrupulous gun dealers and a terrible setback for A.T.F.’s state and local law enforcement partners.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More