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    America is over neoliberalism and neoconservatism. Trump is not | Samuel Moyn

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    The convergence of the US Senate’s passage of Donald Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill” in domestic policy with his strike on Iran in foreign policy has finally resolved the meaning of his presidency. His place in history is now clear. His rise, like that of a reawakened left, indicated that America was ready to move on from its long era of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. In office, Trump has blocked the exits by doubling down on both.The first of those slurs, neoliberalism, refers to the commitment across the political spectrum to use government to protect markets and their hierarchies, rather than to moderate or undo them. The second, neoconservatism, is epitomized by a belligerent and militaristic foreign policy. The domestic policy bill now making its way through Congress, with its payoff to the rich and punishment of the poor, is a monument to neoliberalism; the Iran strike a revival of neoconservatism.Up to now, uncertainty about Trump’s place in history has prevailed, in part because he has done little and dithered so much. From before he took office, apocalyptic premonition of the doom he might bring reigned supreme. Everyone assumed that the Trump era was going to be different, disagreeing only about the exact shape of the horror. On the right, some projected their hopes for transformation on the president, anticipating a different future, wishcasting without knowing whether (or when) their leader would side with them.Now, with his bill and his bombing, Trump has confirmed beyond any doubt that he is a man of a familiar past instead. Though the damage that neoliberalism and neoconservatism wrought helped make Trump’s charlatanry a credible choice for millions, the man himself stands for the eternal return of those very same policies. Trump’s appeal to the working class and more measured rhetoric about war from the start of his political career suggested that he might renege on these two dominant creeds from the beltway “swamp”. He renewed them both instead.This is where Trump’s ultimate significance so clearly lies: in continuity, not change. He busted a lot of norms from the first in 2017. Cries of abnormalcy and authoritarianism arose before there was evidence to back them – and evidence has accumulated through both terms. Charlottesville and January 6 in the first – intimations of deeper reservoirs of hate that could come out of American woodwork, with Trump coyly pandering to the mobs – were preludes to both mass and targeted immigration roundups in this term, reminiscent of classical fascism.Yet climactically, and when it mattered most, Trump has chosen to walk in lockstep with the dead consensus in domestic and foreign policy of the past half-century – not merely among conservatives, but among many liberals. Americans do best when the rich do best of all, with the poor punished for crime and sloth: that has long been our outlook. And the country must go it alone with military force, in order to back our interests or principles or both, Americans have long presumed.Neoliberalism and neoconservatism each has more complexity than this – but, leaning into both, Trump has shown in recent weeks they are not much more complicated either. And if so, Trump is far more a politician of American continuity with the past 50 years than many originally feared (or hoped).The “beautiful” domestic policy bill is one of the morally ugliest in American history. Making Trump’s signature tax cuts from his first term permanent requires both draconian cuts to programs (Medicaid for the poor, worst of all) and piling up even more debt for future generations to figure out. It turns out that Ronald Reagan and the Democrats who followed him in lowering taxation and “reforming” welfare (including by imposing work requirements, as this bill does) were not in another world from Trump. He is in theirs. Revealingly, the main trouble that Trump faced in getting the obscenity of a bill passed – and that he still faces in the House – is convincing Republicans who claim to hate deficit spending so much to rationalize even greater cuts to welfare.On the world stage, Trump has longed for the recognition of a Nobel peace prize. But the deals he thinks will deserve it have proved elusive. In Israel/Palestine, the ceasefire he helped force has broken down and the civilian toll has worsened. In Ukraine, the considerable distance between the warring parties has meant that Trump has not managed to either antagonize or lure either to come to terms. Unlike during his first four years, his Iran intervention means that, rather than bringing peace, exacerbating war is his foreign policy legacy for now.Squandering the inclinations of his base and outraging many more lukewarm supporters sick of foreign entanglements, it was a surprise that he acted with the reckless militarism that was once American common sense. He is no doubt open to any deals that come his way – apparently thinking that Canada or Greenland should clamor to be annexed. But it was foolish in response to the early rhetoric of his second term to expect Trump to revert to expansionist war by sending troops. But in sending B-2 bombers on so escalatory a mission to Iran, he clarified his support for war – incurring risks like no other presidents have taken. If the peace he wants to brag about doesn’t materialize, he is not above a dose of coercive violence.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIronically, Trump’s warlike turn meant that a long list of his neoconservative “never Trump” scourges became “sometimes Trump” supporters overnight. Where populist Republicans have had to grit their teeth and support a neoliberal bill – so much for the working-class party they promised – it was even more spectacular that neoconservatives overcame the hatred for Trump that had helped them launder their former reputations for catastrophic warmongering.With neocon scion Bill Kristol in the lead, after the Iran strike they fawned over the man whom they had spent years castigating as irresponsible, or malignant, or both. No wonder: Trump, far from acting as an isolationist or realist, was executing one of the longest-held and longest-denied neoconservative fantasies: that bombing Iran’s nuclear program off the map would work, and might have the fringe benefit of causing the regime to fall. It remains a fantasy. But Trump’s place in history is now defined by that fantasy more than by any other foreign policy choice he has made so far.Like in his first term, when he ordered the assassination in Iraq of Iranian general and terror master Qassem Suleimani in 2020, Trump’s strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities was illegal. But as the saying goes, Trump’s escalatory and risky use of bunker-busting munitions to wipe Fordow and other sites off the map was worse than a crime; it was a mistake. At best, it elicited a face-saving attack from Iran so that it could come to the negotiating table with a nuclear program to continue in the future; at worst, it will prompt Iran to intensify its efforts to achieve the weapon. And while Israel has certainly set back Iran’s regional designs and capacity for sponsoring terror, there are no signs the regime will relent in its policies.With hopes that he might stand for restraint shredded, it is likelier that a lackey will find a place on Mount Rushmore than that Trump will get the call from Oslo he badly wants. But like the politicians whose faces are already carved in the granite of South Dakota, Trump is a man of the past – and never more clearly than in recent weeks, as America continues to look for someone to liberate it from the zombie neoliberalism and neoconservatism that still define their disastrous present and president.

    Samuel Moyn is the Kent professor of law and history at Yale University, where he also serves as head of Grace Hopper College More

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      Pentagon says US strikes set back Iran nuclear program ‘one to two years’

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      The Pentagon has collected intelligence material that suggests Iran’s nuclear program was set back roughly one to two years as a result of the US strikes on three key facilities last month, the chief spokesperson at the defense department said at a news conference on Wednesday.The spokesperson, Sean Parnell, repeated Donald Trump’s claim that Iran’s key nuclear sites had been completely destroyed, although he did not offer further details on the origin of the assessments beyond saying it came from inside the defense department.“We have degraded their program by one to two years,” Parnell said at a news conference held at the Pentagon. “At least, intel assessments inside the department assess that.”Parnell’s description of the strikes marked a more measured estimate than Trump’s assertions about the level of destruction. A low-confidence Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report based on early assessments said Iran’s program was set back several months.The evolving picture of the severity of the damage to Iran’s nuclear program comes as US intelligence agencies have continued to push out new assessments, using materials that suggested the centrifuges at the key Fordow enrichment site were destroyed even if it was unclear whether the facility itself had caved in.Trump advisers have used that material, which include the use of video taken from B-2 bombers to confirm simulation models of shock waves destroying centrifuges and other Israeli intel from outside Fordow, to defend Trump’s assertions, two people familiar with the matter said.The extent of the damage to Iran’s nuclear program and the fate of the country’s stockpile of enriched uranium – which could quickly be turned into a crude nuclear weapon – is important because it could dictate how long the program has been set back.The head of the UN nuclear watchdog said on Sunday that Iran could be producing enriched uranium in a few months.“They can have in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium,” Rafael Grossi the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said, adding “Iran is a very sophisticated country in terms of nuclear technology … You cannot undo the knowledge that you have or the capacities that you have.”The Pentagon’s preliminary DIA assessment, which was based on information from little more than 24 hours after the strikes, the Guardian previously reported, found the damage could range from Iran being able to restart the facility with new centrifuges to having to abandon it for future use.The DIA report assessed the program had been pushed back by several months, although that finding was made at the so-called “low-confidence” level, reflecting the early nature of the assessment and the uncertainty intelligence agencies have with initial conclusions.Trump advisers have pushed back on the DIA report and said privately the destruction of the centrifuges alone meant they had taken out a key component of Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons and meant it delayed the nuclear program by years.Battles over the conclusions of intelligence agencies have been at the center of American foreign policy determinations for decades, from warnings about Iraq’s weapons programs that the Bush administration used to justify the 2003 invasion that were later found to be false, to claims that a Chinese lab leak was responsible for Covid.Still, much of the controversy about the US strikes has been generated by Trump’s claiming that they “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear sites, which no intelligence agency has directly repeated because it is not a characterization used in intelligence assessments.Verifying the extent of the damage was made more difficult on Wednesday, after Iran put into effect a new law to suspend cooperation with the IAEA. Iran has accused the nuclear watchdog of siding with western countries and providing a justification for Israel’s airstrikes.A state department spokesperson called the move “unacceptable” and said Iran must fully comply with its nuclear non-proliferation treaty obligations, including by providing the IAEA with information on undeclared nuclear material and providing unrestricted access to any newly announced enrichment facility. More

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      Trump signs executive order to lift some financial sanctions on Syria

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      Donald Trump has signed an executive order to lift some financial sanctions on Syria in a move that the White House says will help stabilise the country after the ousting of Bashar al-Assad.The order was designed to “terminate the United States’ sanctions programme on Syria”, a White House spokesperson said, cancelling a 2004 declaration that froze Syrian government property and limited exports to Syria over Damascus’s chemical weapons programme.Some sanctions will remain on Syria, including those mandated through Congress under the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019 that targeted funds for reconstruction and natural gas development, as well as the US declaration of Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism.Trump’s order would mainly direct other members of the administration to consider broader sanctions relief for Syria – and could possibly provide leverage with Syria in talks on normalising ties with Israel and foreign investment in the country’s reconstruction.The order included a direction to secretary of state Marco Rubio to evaluate suspending sanctions under the Caesar Act, permit the relaxation of control on the export of “certain goods”, and lift restrictions on some foreign aid. It also directs Rubio to review Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa’s designation as a terrorist leader and Syria’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, and to consider measures for sanctions relief through the United Nations.“We welcome the cancellation of the majority of the sanctions program imposed on the Syrian Arab Republic, pursuant to the historic executive order issued by President Trump,” said Syrian foreign minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani. “By removing this major obstacle to economic recovery, the doors to long-awaited reconstruction and development are opened, along with the rehabilitation of vital infrastructure, providing the necessary conditions for the dignified and safe return of displaced Syrians to their homeland.”The White House sought to portray the decision as one that would protect US interests, noting Trump’s efforts to “address foreign terrorists”, promote the normalisation of ties with Israel, and prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State.“President Trump wants Syria to succeed – but not at the expense of US interests,” the White House said in a statement.White House officials said that the executive order would maintain pressure on the former leader Assad and his entourage.“The order will remove sanctions on Syria while maintaining sanctions on the former president, Assad, his associates, human rights abusers, drug traffickers, persons linked to chemical weapons activities, Islamic State and their affiliates, and Iranian proxies,” said the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, during a briefing on Monday.The move was widely anticipated after Donald Trump briefly met with Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, who led forces that overthrew Assad in December. Sharaa has complained that the sanctions against Syria had made it difficult to stabilise his fragile transition government, citing issues with paying civil servant wages and funding reconstruction. Trump pledged in May to lift all sanctions on Syria following Assad’s removal from power.The executive order would “end the country’s isolation from the international financial system, setting the stage for global commerce, and galvanizing investments from its neighbors in the region as well as from the US”, said acting under-secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence Brad Smith in a briefing with reporters.Asked about the Abraham accords, the Trump administration’s negotiations for Arab states to normalise diplomatic ties with Israel, a senior administration official suggested that the White House would not push for the recognition of specific territorial claims between Syria and Israel.“We’re going to come to a mutuality of understanding, and you’re going to get there slowly, and there’s going to be metrics and milestones and objectives, and you’re going to start trusting each other,” the official said. “And over this trust, those lines become illusory.” More

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      Trump considers forcing journalists to reveal sources who leaked Iran report

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      Donald Trump said he is weighing forcing journalists who published leaked details from a US intelligence report assessing the impact of the recent American military strikes on Iran to reveal their sources – and the president also claimed his administration may prosecute those reporters and sources if they don’t comply.In an interview Sunday with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, Trump doubled down on his claim that the 21 June airstrikes aimed at certain Iranian facilities successfully crippled Iran’s nuclear program. He insisted the attacks destroyed key enriched uranium stockpiles, despite Iranian assertions that the material had been relocated before the strikes.Trump dismissed the leaked intelligence assessment in question – which suggested the strikes only temporarily disrupted Iran’s nuclear development – as incomplete and biased. The report, circulated among US lawmakers and intelligence officials, concluded that the damage inflicted was significantly less than what Trump’s administration had publicly claimed.The president has attacked both Democratic lawmakers and members of the media for sharing portions of the classified analysis. He then threatened legal consequences for those responsible.During the interview, Bartiromo referenced a post Trump had shared on social media days earlier, in which he wrote: “The Democrats are the ones who leaked the information on the PERFECT FLIGHT to the Nuclear Sites in Iran. They should be prosecuted!”Trump then reiterated on-air that “they should be prosecuted”.“Who specifically?” Bartiromo asked.Trump replied: “You can find out – if they wanted, they could find out easily.”In recent days, Trump has targeted CNN and The New York Times for their reporting on the strikes. He has condemned the coverage as “unpatriotic” and even floated the possibility of legal action.The two outlets, along with several others, reported that preliminary findings from the US’s Defense Intelligence Agency indicated the strikes had only limited success. The bombings delayed Iran’s nuclear ambitions by several months but stopped short of destroying the program outright, according to the assessment.On Sunday, a social media account belonging to the Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, accused Trump of needing to “exaggerate to cover up the truth and keep it secret” after the recent US military strikes “could not do anything”.Trump, in contrast, has repeatedly insisted that three nuclear facilities were “obliterated”.He elaborated on how his administration might pursue the sources of the leak.“You go up and tell the reporter, ‘national security – who gave it?’” Trump said. “You have to do that. And I suspect we’ll be doing things like that.”In the US, the constitution generally protects journalists from being compelled to reveal their sources – but there are limits to that reporter’s privilege, as it is colloquially known.The president had threatened to sue CNN and the New York Times for publishing articles about the preliminary intelligence report ahead of his comments to Bartiromo.In a letter to the Times, a lawyer for Trump said the article had damaged the president’s reputation and demanded that the outlet “retract and apologize for” the piece, which the letter described as “false,” “defamatory” and “unpatriotic”. More

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      Home discomforts send Trump rushing to project image of global patriarch

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      “Daddy’s home.” So said a social media post from the White House, accompanied by a video featuring the song Hey Daddy (Daddy’s Home) by Usher and images of Donald Trump at the Nato summit in The Hague.The US president’s fundraising allies were quick to market $35 T-shirts with his image and the word after Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, referred to Trump’s criticism of Israel and Iran over violations of a ceasefire by quipping: “And then Daddy has to sometimes use strong language to get [them to] stop.”Yet even as Trump seeks to project an image of global patriarch, there are signs of trouble on the home front. His polling numbers are down. His party is struggling to pass his signature legislation. Millions of people have marched in the streets to protest against him. Critics say the president who claims to put America First is in fact putting America Last.Trump is not the first president to find the foreign policy domain, where as commander-in-chief he recently ordered strikes on nuclear sites in Iran, less restrictive than the domestic sphere, where a rambunctious Congress, robust judiciary and sceptical media are constant irritants. But rarely has the gap between symbolic posturing abroad and messy politicking at home been so pronounced.“There’s two presidencies,” said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. “The one on the domestic front is gruesome and involves long-drawn-out and disappointing negotiations with Congress and that’s exactly what Donald Trump is engaged in now. What emerges from Congress is not going to be as ‘big’ or ‘beautiful’ as he promised.“Meanwhile you’ve got staggering photographs of bombs falling from the sky, Donald Trump’s flamboyant description of what he’s achieved in Iran and Europe. That’s the kind of Hollywood performance that Donald Trump wants.”The president stunned the world last Saturday by announcing, on his Truth Social platform, that he had ordered more than 125 aircraft and 75 weapons – including 14 bunker-busting bombs – to hit three targets in Iran to prevent the country obtaining a nuclear weapon.He followed up with a White House speech, choreographed to project an image of power, in which he declared: “Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”View image in fullscreenThat narrative has since been cast into doubt by a leaked intelligence report suggesting that the operation set back Iran’s nuclear programme by only a few months. Still, Trump pivoted to the role of peacemaker, again using Truth Social to announce a ceasefire between Iran and Israel, prompting Republicans to gush that he should win the Nobel peace prize.Trump’s barrage of speeches, interactions with reporters and social media posts about the Middle East were likened by some to a daily soap opera, dominating Americans’ attention and distracting them from his one big beautiful bill, a budget plan that threatens to slash the social safety net that many of his own supporters depend on.Jacobs observed: “This is a classic deception. He’s like the carnival barker who’s waving his hands to keep the attention of the audience even as he’s hiding the part for the next trick.“What’s coming out of Congress is going to absolutely harm many of his voters. Politicians like to cover their tracks; there’s no covering the tracks here. There will be known cuts to widely used popular programmes like the healthcare for Medicaid and there will be no doubt as to who’s responsible. These are traceable, highly visible consequences of Donald Trump.”Now in the sixth month of his second presidency, Trump’s domestic honeymoon is over. A poll of 1,006 likely voters nationwide by John Zogby Strategies on 24 and 25 June found the president’s approval rating down three points to 45%. About 49% of voters approve of his handling of immigration while 47% disapprove but on the economy 43% approve and 54% disapprove.Asked if they expect Trump’s presidency will make them financially better off or worse off, 40% said better and 50% said worse. Zogby commented: “There is a lot of anxiety domestically, first and foremost on the economy. People are confused and insecure. The numbers are plunging.”View image in fullscreenConsumer confidence unexpectedly deteriorated in June, a sign of economic uncertainty because of Trump’s sweeping tariffs. The anxiety reported by the Conference Board was across the political spectrum, with the steepest decline among Republicans. And the share of consumers viewing jobs as plentiful was the smallest since March 2021.Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic senator, argued in a floor speech this week that Trump had broken him promise to lower costs “on day one”. She said: “American families don’t need another war – they need good jobs and lower prices, and that is what we should be focused on.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWarren listed 10 ways in which the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would raise costs for families, from rent to groceries to prescription drug prices, and warned that it will take healthcare away from more than 16 million people. Republicans in the House of Representatives and Senate continue to haggle over the contents of the bill as a 4 July deadline looms.Neera Tanden, president and chief executive of the Center for American Progress and a former domestic policy adviser to President Joe Biden, told an audience on Thursday: “This legislation is the greatest Robin Hood-in-reverse legislation that I have ever seen in my lifetime. It is cutting healthcare for working-class people and using those dollars to fund tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.”View image in fullscreenMeanwhile discontent is simmering over Trump’s signature issue of immigration, even among some of his own voters. Videos of people being snatched off the streets or beaten by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents have provoked widespread revulsion.There have also been cases such as that of Ming Li Hui, a popular member of staff at a restaurant in rural Missouri who was arrested and jailed to await deportation. Her friend Vanessa Cowart told the New York Times: “I voted for Donald Trump, and so did practically everyone here. But no one voted to deport moms. We were all under the impression we were just getting rid of the gangs, the people who came here in droves.”Meanwhile aggressive workplace raids are hurting hotels, restaurants, farms, construction firms and meatpacking companies, including in conservative states. The alarm recently got through to Trump, who admitted that some undocumented immigrants were actually “very good, longtime workers” and ordered a temporary pause, only to then yield back to hardliners in his administration.Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “In a restaurant, if you lose your cooks, you can’t serve people and you lose money. If you are in a factory where people have been swooped up by Ice, you have to do more work.“It puts more of the burden on the same people who might have voted for Donald Trump – lower-income or middle-income factory workers or meat-processing people. They’re feeling the effects of this immigration sweep in ways that the administration did not anticipate.”View image in fullscreenTrump’s second term has been further marred by the tech billionaire Elon Musk leading a “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, that fired thousands of federal workers but fell far short of its cost-saving target before Musk left amid acrimony. The president’s authoritarian attacks on cultural institutions, law firms, media organisations and universities fuelled “No Kings” protests involving more than 5 million people in more than 2,100 cities and towns across the country on 14 June.In that context, it is perhaps not surprising that Trump should relish the global stage, where any world leader is just a phone call away and where he is now being feted as statesman and father figure. It has proven easier to drop bombs on Iran or pressure Nato to agree to a big increase in military spending than to tame Thomas Massie, a rebellious Kentucky Republican defying him over both Iran and the spending bill.Schiller added: “It is true for every president, Republican or Democrat, that when things are going south domestically they turn to foreign affairs. Trump feels in some ways more powerful on the global stage than he does trying to get Congress to do what he wants. The House Republicans are giving him a hard time. The Senate Republicans are giving him a hard time. He’s annoyed by this so then he goes, well, we’re a global military power.” More

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      I’m glad we have rules. I just don’t expect people to follow them | Dave Schilling

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      Rules are great. I think most of us over the age of five will agree that having them is preferable to not. Perhaps there are a few stragglers out there reading this who would love to cosplay a lesser sequel of The Purge, swinging baseball bats at strangers and urinating in the street, but I would imagine you are in the minority on that. Rules are the backbone of what we have left of society. I’m not happy about where we are, but I don’t make the rules. At least not yet. I just need to host a popular reality show – then my political career can really take off.A recent interaction has me reflecting on this. I was wandering over to my local coffee shop one morning, off a wide boulevard where motorists scream through intersections like the car from Ghostbusters late for a particularly aggressive haunting. A crosswalk, with accompanying yellow yield light, was recently installed to combat the minor issue of pedestrians being flattened by drivers on their way to the hair salon or texting about being late to the hair salon. The light has been mostly successful in preventing the human waffle-ironing, but it requires walkers to actually press the button to activate it. This is a step that people often dismiss, hoping and praying that the drivers out there are lucid enough to acknowledge the existence of others. Without the yellow light, we’re all operating on the honor system for not killing each other.That morning, someone confidently strolled into the intersection, and was mortified that the car screaming down the road didn’t immediately stop for him. The pedestrian hollered and moaned as the vehicle screeched to a halt. Once he was done cursing and spitting on the street, the man crossed and the befuddled driver carried on. Besides my relief at not witnessing a homicide, I was left wondering why the man was so upset. Was he expecting the driver to follow the rules? How naive. Let’s pray this guy never ends up involved in global foreign policy.I couldn’t help but think of this beautifully trusting pedestrian during the last week of nail-biting brinkmanship between the United States and Iran. A few bombs here, a couple of missiles there. Some erratic social media posts later, and we have something akin to a ceasefire for the time being. Donald Trump claimed the Iranian nuclear capability had been “obliterated”, though experts say the country’s program was only set back by a few months.It all comes back to the rules we make. We had an Obama-era deal to cap Iran’s atomic ambitions – but Trump pulled the US out of it back in 2018, drastically curtailing the west’s ability to hold the ayatollah to his promises. It’s like if Los Angeles decided to take the crosswalk out of my neighborhood and instead ask people nicely not to run each other over with giant piles of metal going over 40mph – and if someone got hit, to blow up the area with a bunker buster.We need rules, even if we assume people will break them early and often. Because the vast majority of us won’t. Most of us are too timid, too square or, in my case, too lazy. The alternative to rules is anarchy: a fistfight in the supermarket or a bachelor party in Atlantic City. Still, it’s time to expect that the arc of the universe will not bend in our direction, that our fellows might not be considering whether or not to slow down through the intersection of life.I don’t want to wade too deeply into the finer points of foreign policy, because, as I mentioned above, I have never hosted a reality television program. But I am highly qualified to complain about things, which I will continue doing in this space for the foreseeable future. Assume the worst, as I do, and your life will be much simpler. Expect those around you to fail and flout the rules that govern our world. Does this sound cynical? Of course it does. Does that mean it’s wrong? Absolutely not. Look around. Not just at the inside of your living room, the bathroom stall or wherever it is you’re reading this. I mean, look around metaphorically. Our institutions are wobbly, our trust in order is at an all-time low, and Vanderpump Rules might never come back for new episodes. Where is the justice?The Democratic primary victory of the New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has been the talk of the entire US, acting as a lighthouse of hope in the choppy pea-soup shit fog of 2025. But in order for Mamdani to win that primary, people had to show up. They had to vote for him and not assume someone else would. Better to assume everyone around you had a nasty fall on the head and can’t stop saying “Cuomo” over and over again. Expect the worst, then enjoy the surprise of being wrong.If I did host a reality show, and therefore became eligible for the presidency, this would be the primary tenet of my foreign policy. “If we bomb Iran, people will be upset. And upset people do nasty things” – sure, that won’t fit on a campaign button, but I’m sure I could hire someone to workshop it into something catchier. I’m obviously thrilled we all haven’t been vaporized, but decisions made today do have this pesky way of leading to calamities of the future. You only need to think back to the 1953 CIA coup that led to the overthrow of the Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Cleverer people than me (with a higher word-count maximum) could explain the connection between that regime change and Iran’s persistent conflict with the United States.What will be the long-term effects of the US-Israeli bombing campaign? Unfortunately, I’m stuck in the present and can’t give you a definitive answer. That is one of the many drawbacks of corporeal existence, another of which is getting hit by a car. Whatever happens next, don’t expect it to be fun.But if it is, and we’re all drinking champagne in Tehran in a decade, you can come back here and tell me I’m stupid. What a lovely surprise that would be.

      Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist More

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      Briefing on Iran strikes leaves senators divided as Trump threatens new row

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      Republican and Democratic senators have offered starkly contrasting interpretations of Donald Trump’s bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities after a delayed behind-closed-doors intelligence briefing that the White House had earlier postponed amid accusations of leaks.Thursday’s session with senior national security officials came after the White House moved back its briefing, originally scheduled for Tuesday, fueling Democratic complaints that Trump was stonewalling Congress over military action the president authorized without congressional approval.“Senators deserve full transparency, and the administration has a legal obligation to inform Congress precisely about what is happening,” the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, said following the initial postponement, which he termed “outrageous”.Even as senators were being briefed, Trump reignited the row with a Truth Social post accusing Democrats of leaking a draft Pentagon report that suggested last weekend’s strikes had only set back Iran’s nuclear program by months – contradicting the president’s insistence that it was “obliterated”.“The Democrats are the ones who leaked the information on the PERFECT FLIGHT to the Nuclear Sites in Iran. They should be prosecuted!” he wrote.The partisan divisions were on display after the briefing, which was staged in the absence of Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, who previously told Congress that Iran was not building nuclear weapons, before changing her tune last week after Trump said she was “wrong”.Instead, the briefing was led by CIA director John Ratcliffe, secretary of state Marco Rubio and defense secretary Pete Hegseth, who had publicly assailed journalists over their reporting on the strikes at a Pentagon press conference.With intelligence agencies apparently in open dispute over the strikes’ effectiveness, Thursday’s briefing did little to clear up the clashing interpretations on Capitol Hill.Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina senator and close Trump ally, said “obliteration” was a “good word” to describe the strikes’ impact.“They blew these places up in a major-league way. They set them back years, not months,” he said. “Nobody is going to work in these three sites any time soon. Their operational capability was obliterated.”But he warned that Iran would be likely to try to reconstitute them, adding: “Have we obliterated their desire to have a nuclear weapon? As long as they desire one, as long as they want to kill all the Jews, you still have a problem on your hands. I don’t want the American people to think this is over.”But Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, said Trump was “misleading the public” in claiming the program was obliterated and questioned why Gabbard had not attended the briefing.His skepticism was echoed by Schumer, who said the briefing gave “no adequate answer” to questions about Trump’s claims.“What was clear is that there was no coherent strategy, no endgame, no plan, no specific[s], no detailed plan on how Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon,” he said, adding that Congress needed to assert its authority by enforcing the War Powers Act.Gabbard and Ratcliffe had scrambled on Wednesday to back Trump, with Gabbard posting on X: “New intelligence confirms what POTUS has stated numerous times: Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed.”The ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, Jim Himes, dismissed the destruction claims as meaningless. “The only question that matters is whether the Iranian regime has the stuff necessary to build a bomb, and if so, how fast,” he posted.The destruction response has also rankled Republican senators in the anti-interventionist wing of the party such as Rand Paul, who rejected claims of absolute presidential war powers.“I think the speaker needs to review the constitution,” said Paul. “And I think there’s a lot of evidence that our founding fathers did not want presidents to unilaterally go to war.”The Senate is expected to vote this week on a resolution requiring congressional approval for future military action against Iran, though the measure appears unlikely to pass given Republican control of the chamber.The White House also admitted on Thursday to restricting intelligence sharing after news of the draft assessment leaking.Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters the administration wants to ensure “classified intelligence is not ending up in irresponsible hands”. Leavitt later said the US assessed that there “was no indication” enriched uranium was moved from the nuclear sites in Iran ahead of the strikes.Trump formally notified Congress of the strikes in a brief letter sent on Monday, two days after the bombing, saying the action was taken “to advance vital United States national interests, and in collective self-defense of our ally, Israel, by eliminating Iran’s nuclear program”.The administration says it remains “on a diplomatic path with Iran” through special envoy Steve Witkoff’s communications with Iranian officials. More

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      Trump officials cite ‘new intelligence’ to back president’s claims of success in strikes on Iran

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      Donald Trump’s administration ratcheted up its defence of the US’s weekend attacks on Iran, citing “new intelligence” to support its initial claim of complete success and criticising a leaked intelligence assessment that suggested Tehran’s nuclear programme had been set back by only a few months.The growing row came amid reports that the White House will to try to limit the sharing of classified documents with Congress, according to the Washington Post and the Associated Press.“This was a devastating attack, and it knocked them for a loop,” Trump said on Wednesday, apparently backing away from comments he’d made earlier in the day, that the intelligence was “inconclusive”.Senior Trump officials publicly rejected the leaked initial assessment of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) which concluded key components of the nuclear programme were capable of being restarted within months. Director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in a post on X that “new intelligence confirms” what Trump has stated.“Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed. If the Iranians chose to rebuild, they would have to rebuild all three facilities (Natanz, Fordow, Esfahan) entirely, which would likely take years to do,” she said.CIA director John Ratcliffe in a statement said that new intelligence from a “historically reliable” source indicated that “several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”During a news conference at the Nato summit, Trump briefly ceded the stage to defence secretary Pete Hegseth, who lashed out at the media and claimed reporters were using the leaked intelligence assessment to politically damage Trump. “They want to spin it to try to make him look bad,” he said.In the wake of the leaked DIA report, the White House will reportedly to try to limit the sharing of classified documents with Congress, a senior official told the Associated Press.Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer criticised the reported decision to limit information sharing, saying “senators deserve information, and the administration has a legal obligation to inform Congress precisely about what is happening right now abroad”.Classified briefings for lawmakers had been scheduled to take place on Tuesday, but were postponed, prompting outrage from members of Congress. The briefings are now expected to take place on Thursday and Friday.The leaked DIA assessment also found that much of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which would provide the fuel for making any future nuclear warhead, had been moved before the strikes and may have been moved to other secret nuclear sites maintained by Iran. That claim was backed up by the UN nuclear watchdog – the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – which said it lost “visibility” of the material when “hostilities began”.However, in an interview with French television, IAEA director-general Rafael Grossi said: “I don’t want to give the impression that it’s been lost or hidden.”View image in fullscreenOn Wednesday, the White House pushed back on those claims, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt telling Fox News the US had “no indication that that enriched uranium was moved prior to the strikes, as I also saw falsely reported”.“As for what’s on the ground right now, it’s buried under miles and miles of rubble because of the success of these strikes on Saturday evening,” she said.The US military said it dropped 14 GBU-57 bunker-buster bombs – powerful 13,600kg (30,000lb) weapons – on three Iranian nuclear sites. Since the attacks, Trump has repeatedly claimed that the sites were “obliterated”.The White House highlighted an Israeli statement that Iran’s nuclear efforts were delayed by years, while a spokesperson for the Iranian foreign ministry also said the facilities have suffered significant damage.On Wednesday evening, Trump said that Hegseth – whom he dubbed “war” secretary – would hold a news conference at 8am EST on Thursday to “fight for the dignity of our great American pilots”, referring to the pilots of the B2 bombers that carried out the strikes. He said that “these patriots were very upset” by “fake news” reports about the limited impact of the strikes.As the row grew over how much the strikes set back Tehran’s nuclear programme, diplomatic efforts to prevent Iran from rebuilding the programme also gathered pace.Trump said US and Iranian officials would meet soon, resuming a dialogue that was interrupted by the nearly two week war, even as he suggested that negotiations were no longer necessary.
      “I don’t care if I have an agreement or not,” Trump said, because Iran was too badly damaged to even consider rebuilding its programme. “They’re not going to be doing it anyway. They’ve had it.”View image in fullscreenThe IAEA has rejected an “hourglass approach” involving different assessments of how many months or years it would take Iran to rebuild, saying it distracts from finding a long-term solution to an issue that had not been resolved.“In any case, the technological knowledge is there and the industrial capacity is there. That, no one can deny. So we need to work together with them,” Grossi said, adding that his priority was the return of IAEA inspectors to the nuclear sites, the only way he said they could be properly assessed.Meanwhile, Iranian authorities are pivoting from their ceasefire with Israel to intensifying an internal security crackdown across the country with mass arrests, executions and military deployments, according to officials and activists.Iran’s intelligence services have arrested 26 people, accusing them of collaborating with Israel, state media Fars news agency reported.Some in Israel and exiled opposition groups had hoped the 12-day military campaign, which targeted Revolutionary Guards and internal security forces as well as nuclear sites, would spark a mass uprising and the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.While numerous Iranians expressed anger at the government, there has been no sign yet of any significant protests against the authorities.With the Associated Press and Reuters More