The Coming AOC Presidential Campaign

By Jim Geraghty

Tuesday, May 26, 2026

 

Axios reports that New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is “making new moves toward a possible White House bid. Ocasio-Cortez launched a national tour in recent weeks — without calling it one. Democratic operatives expect she would easily raise $100 million just from small-dollar donors, mobilize many supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ past campaigns, and command attention as few other candidates could.”

 

When lots of people tell a party’s rising star that he should run for president, he often ends up running for president. (AOC was elected in 2018, so she’s probably not a “rising star” in Democratic politics anymore; she’s a full-on star.) There’s no guarantee that four to eight years from now, Democrats will be as enamored with her. Every incentive is to strike when the iron is hot, and if you’re a Democrat, you probably feel pretty good about your odds in 2028 in a national electorate likely to be absolutely exhausted from the Trump era.

 

This is not good news for the U.S., which faces a dangerous world now and is likely to face a comparably dangerous world when the next president takes the oath of office on January 20, 2029. In February, when AOC went to the Munich Security Conference, she was asked a very basic yes-or-no question of “would and should the U.S. actually commit U.S. troops to defend Taiwan if China were to [invade]” and answered with incoherent word salad. If the congresswoman had ever put any thought into what the U.S. ought to do in that scenario, she hid it exceptionally well.

 

Her broader remarks weren’t much better. Asked about balancing a need for increased defense spending and nations’ debts, she veered back into familiar territory about “reining in corporations” and the “billionaire class.” She offered generic comments that international aid is good, and rote denunciation of “NAFTA as a failed policy for many rural and working-class communities.”  (NAFTA was replaced on July 1, 2020.) The Democratic Party is still anti-free trade, even as they denounce Trump’s tariffs.

 

AOC isn’t that interested in foreign policy, beyond the now-standard Israel-bashing; she now opposes all U.S. military aid to Israel, including assistance to air defense systems that prevent Iranian, Hezbollah, and Hamas rockets from hitting civilian targets.

 

We keep getting reminded that foreign policy and national security are second-tier concerns of the American electorate. But the rest of the world never cooperates with presidents who want to focus primarily on domestic issues.

 

It was only a month ago that Axios was telling us that while the AOC is a ubiquitous social media presence, she doesn’t like doing sit-down interviews, and when she does, “it’s usually with an ideologically sympathetic outlet or reporter.”

 

We saw this with Joe Biden, and we saw this with Kamala Harris. We are beset by overambitious, under-studied politicians who are absolutely convinced they’re ready to sit behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office and order U.S. troops into combat when needed, but not ready to sit down for an hour with a major cable news host who’s going to ask them tougher-than-usual questions. If you want to be president of the United States, then you need to be able to sit down with someone who’s going to say some variation of, “your policies, ideas, and agenda stink, and you should not be trusted with power” and you need to be able to respond, “no, my policies, ideas, and agenda are the right answers, and here’s why” in a persuasive matter. This is Politics 101.

 

If you need to be wrapped in bubble wrap to get through a national tour, you are not going to get through the challenges of a presidential campaign.

 

The only constitutional requirements to be president are to be a natural-born citizen and at least 35 years old. (AOC turned 36 in October.) In a better world, we might add a constitutional requirement that a potential president must have run something larger than a congressional office in their life. This is not mocking or thinking less of AOC for having once been a bartender. Bartending is noble and important work, and unlike members of Congress, bartenders get judged on their results. Technically, AOC also founded Brook Avenue Press, a publishing house developing “urban literature for kids.” The state of New York issued the company a tax warrant for failing to pay taxes. As of 2022, the tax warrant against her was still open.

 

Whenever AOC gets criticized, she and her fanbase keep insisting that her critics are “obsessed” with her. (Back in 2018, CNN aired a segment about conservative media’s alleged “obsession” with the congresswoman featuring Brian Stelter, Cenk Uygur and . . . Olivia Nuzzi. I suppose that if you want to discuss the phenomenon of an unhealthy obsession with political figures, you go to an expert on unhealthy obsession with political figures.)

 

These same AOC defenders simultaneously insist she is one of the most powerful, important, consequential, and fascinating figures in Washington. (As of today, no bill for which AOC was the primary sponsor has been enacted into law across her entire congressional career.) You can’t have it both ways. If you are a major political figure who wants to be president, you must accept the scrutiny that comes with being a major political figure who wants to be president, and you can’t reflexively deploy the line from Regina George in Mean Girls, “Why are you so obsessed with me?”

 

Grähäm Plätner, Stark Raving Maniac

 

Maine Democrats have nominated a stone-cold sociopath for U.S. Senate, and now they must pretend like everything is fine.

 

Democratic Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner declined to apologize both to voters and a Purple Heart recipient when asked by Fox News Digital about a deleted Reddit post where he said the wounded soldier “didn’t deserve to live.”

 

Platner did not respond at first when asked outside a market near his home whether he regrets making the post, which Fox News Digital reported earlier this week showed him mocking a video of Pfc. Ted Daniels taken during a clash with Taliban fighters in 2012 that ended in Daniels being shot four times and being awarded a Purple Heart.

 

“I did four tours in the infantry, any attempt to say that I disrespect veterans is slanderous and offensive,” Platner said when asked follow-up questions about what he would say to any Maine voters who were offended by his post and if he should apologize to Daniels.

 

“This video never gets old,” Platner posted in June 2019 using the Reddit account “P-Hustle,” which he has acknowledged owning, in reference to a viral video from the helmet Daniels was wearing while taking enemy fire.

 

I’m getting awfully tired of this “how dare you” reflexive indignation schtick when a candidate for Senate has his own comments read back to him. It’s not the reporter’s fault that you sound like an unhinged maniac.

 

Democrats have studied Trump’s success in two out of the past three elections and concluded that the road to political victory requires A) saying outlandish things and B) never apologizing, even when one is abundantly warranted.

 

Down in Texas, Watching the ‘Jail and Castrate Zionists’ Democrat . . .

 

Today, Texans go to the polls for the Republican Senate primary runoff. Walking scandal machine Ken Paxton, who leaves a trail of slime everywhere he goes, is expected to win over incumbent John Cornyn, thanks to President Trump’s strangely delayed endorsement. (Our Jeff Blehar recalls, “Paxton fired multiple whistleblowers in the Texas attorney general’s office for revealing that they had been forced to employ one of his mistresses, and then he was forced by a district court to pay out $6.6 million in damages to them, all with taxpayer dollars.”)

 

But elsewhere in Texas, Democrats have their own high-stakes runoff. Texas’ 35th Congressional District is one of those redrawn districts. Today, Democrats will vote in a runoff between sex therapist Maureen Galindo and sheriff’s deputy Johnny Garcia. Galindo received the most votes, or a bit more than 29 percent, in the March primary. She has some . . . unorthodox views:

 

In an Instagram post last week, Galindo wrote that she will “turn Karnes ICE Detention Center into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking. (It will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles which will probably be most of the Zionists).”

 

 She initially insisted her remark could not be considered antisemitic because she believed in jailing Christian Zionists as well. Then she told the New York Times, “Everything is based off a local journalist twisting words.”

 

 Ma’am, you wrote that in your own Instagram post. You decided the context.

 

 Now, every new member of Congress begins their duties by swearing an oath.

 

 The Speaker directs the Representatives-elect to rise and raise their right hands. The oath, which follows, is stated in the form of a question, to which the newly elected Members respond in the affirmative:

 

[Do you] I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that [you] I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that [you] I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that [you] I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that [you] I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which [you] I am about to enter[?]. So help [you] me God.

 

If you believe that “Zionists” should be jailed for their views, you oppose the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment and thus are not supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. (There is a strong argument that you are, in fact, one of those domestic enemies.)

 

ADDENDUM: Over in the Washington Post, a visit to NASK — the Polish national institute for cybersecurity — and an observation that the Russian, Chinese, and Iranian governments collectively spend billions of dollars on propaganda and information warfare. Meanwhile, we’ve shut down the U.S. State Department’s Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference center and have Voice of America operating on a skeleton crew. There’s a war going on to shape how the world perceives America and the other great powers, and we have deliberately chosen to concede the battlefield.

Iran’s New ‘Nuclear’ Weapon

By Eric S. Edelman, Reuel Marc Gerecht, & Ray Takeyh

Tuesday, May 26, 2026

 

The Islamic Republic isn’t a problem that can be wished away through quick fixes. Countering Iran, which is a far less challenging foe than the former Soviet Union and communist-turned-fascist China, is, nonetheless, a demanding prospect. And we know what doesn’t work: Arms-control agreements laced with financial dividends didn’t transform the Islamist regime into a responsible state. If anything, Barack Obama’s nuclear deal provided the cash that allowed Tehran to intensify its malevolent behavior. Washington’s exclusive focus on Iran’s nuclear threat also told Tehran that its proxy-war strategy against Israel wouldn’t encounter any serious American opposition. Any new nuclear deal, if one is even possible today, will likely recertify all the crippling weaknesses of the first accord and possibly add more.

 

Donald Trump appears on the cusp of an agreement to demilitarize, at least temporarily, the Hormuz Strait. Ancillary to this may be certain Iranian nuclear promises and U.S. sanctions relief. Whatever the actual details of this accord are, no matter whether it later, in part or entirely, falls apart, this agreement flows directly from Tehran dueling Washington to a standstill. Iranian tenacity, not the acumen of the regime’s diplomats and statesmen or the feebleness of their American counterparts, has led to this point.  

 

An indisputable truth: A massive bombing campaign by Israel and the United States has allowed Tehran to see the incomparable utility of the Strait of Hormuz as a weapon against the global economy and its primary enemies. Donald Trump may have finally “TACOed” because he’s unwilling to take the military risks that would surely accompany any serious effort to open the strait. A reanimated Islamist regime—and we don’t doubt that senior commanders in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps now think they are winning—might even refuse a generous nuclear deal because it’s having so much fun humbling its foes. In the past, the clerical regime often overplayed its hand. This war, and the one last June, probably wouldn’t have happened if Tehran had been less zealous in supporting its proxies, expanding uranium enrichment, and increasing missile production. It’s possible it will overplay its hand again.

 

Yet a victory in the strait for Iran offers the promise of almost everything: a defeat of the United States and regime-buttressing shockwaves coming from that failure; the ever-present prospect of money from tolls on Persian Gulf shipping; restarting the export of Iranian oil to China and possibly to others for hard currency; a potential check on overt Israeli attacks on Iran and greater American hesitancy—possibly even discord between Jerusalem and Washington—about Israeli actions against Iranian proxies; and Iranian dominion over the future of Arab Gulf states. The Islamic Republic has been desperate for a win since the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, unleashed a sequence of events that shredded so many of the regime’s accomplishments. It looks now like it could be on the cusp of a big one.

 

Though we can still imagine a containment strategy against the clerical regime, if the Islamic Republic can hold Hormuz hostage, Tehran will severely wound America’s self-confidence, reputation, and capacity.  Even if some arrangement can be made to allow commercial traffic to pass without paying tolls, which appears to be part of the current agreement between Tehran and Washington, once most of the U.S. armada returns home, the odds of the warships returning aren’t good. The odds of the Islamic Republic demanding tolls later are a near certainty. Freedom of navigation ends unless Washington can find the military means and the will necessary to sustain convoys, even under hostile fire. This frustrating denouement, which would ensure shipping remains far below pre-war levels, may be enough, however, to avoid $150-plus-per-barrel oil and a global recession. It could conceivably allow Washington to maintain regime-crippling pressure on Tehran. Take away the U.S. armada, however, and Washington will lose most of its leverage.  

 

All nations have their breaking points. It’s possible that the theocracy may succumb to the contradictions of its own making. Yet the regime’s resilience has been impressive. Bound together by ideological conviction, the regime’s elite remains deeply entrenched and multilayered. Though battered, the regime still appears to retain the capacity to mobilize its core supporters, make decisions, and enforce them.

 

***

 

In January, Iranian security forces killed with brutal efficiency. This uprising was one of the most consequential and sobering in the history of the Islamic Republic. This was the first time the clerical oligarchs faced popular protest after losing a war in June. The sight of Americans and, more humiliatingly, Israelis blowing up nuclear installations and killing generals in their homes was a bad look for a regime that rules by force and fear. Both President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sensed in the regime’s defeat last June the prospect of its collapse. This undoubtedly nudged them toward launching another campaign in February.

 

But that campaign has yielded a more unpredictable regime. The new powerbrokers are drawn largely from the Revolutionary Guards, with the still-hidden Mojtaba Khamenei, the putative, wounded supreme leader, taking his cues from the enforcers. These men are not necessarily more militant, but in some ways they are bolder. The American and Israeli killings precipitated a shift within the regime, elevating those who had grown weary of what they regarded as Ali Khamenei’s nuclear timidity in the face of mounting danger.

 

A series of articles in Javan, a mouthpiece of the Revolutionary Guards, introduced a new doctrine dubbed “offensive deterrence.” The series began by taking a swipe at the martyred supreme leader: “Iran’s previous doctrine was defined in controlling tensions below the level of war, but the forty-day war was the starting point for deterrence through expanding the geography of crisis.” The new crew highlighted the geographical weapon that the regime had always boasted about in its propaganda but never attempted to use: “The Strait of Hormuz overlooks the coast of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and it is natural that, as a coastal country, we have the right to monitor and exercise sovereignty over our coastal waters. … The world economy’s critical dependence on this route makes this source of income absolutely unsanctionable and transforms the structure of Iran’s political economy from crude oil sales to sustainable transit income.” Ali Nikzad, the deputy speaker of Parliament, went so far as to declare, “The Strait of Hormuz is Iran’s atomic bomb.”

 

It is an exaggeration to claim that nuclear arms have lost their centrality in the regime’s strategic calculations. The bomb is still important for ensuring Iran’s regional sway. But the nuclear infrastructure is far too battered to deliver nuclear weapons soon. By contrast, control over the waterways offers immediate, simpler power.

 

President Trump’s failure to gain control over Hormuz undoubtedly in part flows from the realization  of how much effort would be required to hold the strait after the battle to clear it. Containing the Islamic Republic will necessitate a radical review of the prevailing assumptions that have underpinned earlier national-security strategies—both Republican and Democratic. The Trump administration’s 2026 National Defense Strategy suggested, “[Department of War] will empower regional allies and partners to take primary responsibility for deterring and defending against Iran and its proxies.” The United States has sought to move away from involvement in “forever wars,” relying on Israel and Arab Gulf states who were supposedly “increasingly willing and able to do more … against Iran and its proxies.” More U.S. military assets and defense spending were supposed to be shifted toward China.

 

Although U.S. partners in the region have been increasing their own indigenous defense capabilities, this war has shown that neither the Saudis nor the Emiratis are comfortable on offense, despite reports that they launched clandestine strikes of their own against Iran. Only American involvement can provide key military capabilities–for example, continuous technically gathered intelligence, persistent reconnaissance, surveillance, command and control, and the sheer firepower necessary for degrading the Iranian military. We know already that nearly 40 days of bombing has not yet provided us with deterrence since the regime still is capable of shooting at ships and our Gulf allies. That could change since the Revolutionary Guards might prefer to absorb less damage. In any case, we do know that the U.S. would need to maintain in theater a lot of firepower to have any chance of dissuading the Guards from further violence.

 

Patrolling the Persian Gulf to keep the Strait of Hormuz open post-ceasefire would be a mission of uncertain duration, depending on the regime’s ability to survive the unresolved crises it faces. At a minimum, it would demand a large, sustained, multi-domain, layered, multinational defense presence. The U.S. will need to rebuild or relocate the many bases it has operated in the region in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Iraq, as they appear to have sustained serious damage. Some of the cost, estimated to be between $15 billion and $25 billion, will presumably be borne by host nations. But not all of it. Beyond the facilities, the cost of replacing and/or repairing the 40-plus manned and unmanned aircraft that were damaged or destroyed will likely to fall on the U.S. taxpayer as will the costs of replenishing America’s depleted munitions stocks—an effort that is already creating ripple effects in Europe and the Indo-Pacific.

 

The ongoing requirements would likely mean that the U.S., which in recent years has had no or just one carrier strike group near the Middle East, will likely in future require two. An Amphibious Ready Group or two would also be necessary, as well as up to six to 10 guided-missile destroyers, two attack submarines, and a guided-missile submarine. The force would also require several P-8 Poseidon maritime surveillance and RC-135 Rivet Joint reconnaissance planes and unmanned MQ-9 Reaper aircraft for continuous surveillance. We would need to maintain E-2D Hawkeye and E-3 Sentry aircraft for command-and-control purposes, as well as a variety of rotary-wing aircraft for coastal and search-and-rescue operations.

 

Also needed are ground and sea-based fighter aircraft, several Independence-class littoral combat ships for demining operations, and unmanned autonomous vehicles and manned aircraft for persistent surveillance. Augmented land- and sea-based aircraft would add striking power to the mix. The force won’t need to be as big as the current buildup, but it would be significant, and the cost would be considerable (perhaps $5 billion to $10 billion dollars annually). It would also entail geopolitical costs as well, since it will limit the ability of the U.S. to move its forces to other theaters. Allies would be necessary to supply some capabilities like frigates, which the U.S. Navy lacks, for escort and additional mine-sweeping to supplement America’s limited resources for counter-mine warfare. Our European allies have long had the bulk of the West’s mine-sweepers.

 

In short, this would be a considerable military mission, more redolent of the “forever wars” that the president and vice president have decried rather than the “right-sized” presence envisaged by his administration in 2024.

 

With an American failure in the strait, demands on American intelligence are going to increase since Tehran will likely want to push the envelope and try to hurt us even more—regardless of what is in Trump’s agreement with the clerical regime. War or no war, all of the mundane intelligence tasks aren’t disappearing. Washington will have to monitor the bombed nuclear facilities closely, and the bombed underground military bases and factories involved with ballistic-missile and drone production. We will need to know how many and what kind of missiles and drones the Islamic Republic will be able to build, and how quickly, given the damage to factories and supply lines, and whether the Russians and Chinese will meaningfully help the effort. With a U.S. defeat in the strait, it’s a very good bet that both Russia and China will see greater strategic value in an axis that is already well-established. Moscow, which benefits enormously from higher oil prices and is increasingly under stress in the Ukraine war, may be tempted to rearm Iran with better weapons.

 

All of this U.S. intelligence effort will unavoidably keep us thinking about regime change in the Islamic Republic; we would be foolish not to do so since, ultimately, the collapse of the Islamist government is the only answer to all of the problems that started with Ruhollah Khomeini’s triumph.

 

***

 

Iran’s internal problems remain enormous. This war has made most of them worse. The unpleasantness of an Iranian triumph in the Gulf—and the Islamist hubris that it will generate in Tehran—may be enough to finally shake Democrats out of their engagement fantasy. There may be enough liberal internationalist sentiment left among Democrats to explore ways of helping the Iranian people and keep Democrats on the congressional intelligence committees from killing clandestine programs. We also assume that Republicans won’t go belly up, that isolationism and the Iran-is-no-threat rumination that Tucker Carlson and his ilk sometimes express, won’t gain more ground.

 

The Trump administration and much of the right are allergic to the phrase “regime change,” seeing it as a negation of the “realism” favored by many in the America First crowd. But the ugliness of what may well happen globally after freedom of navigation ends in the Persian Gulf may be enough, combined with the enforced frugality that is surely coming because of the size of America’s national debt, to encourage folks on the right and left to seek relatively inexpensive options for countering an Islamic Republic doped up on victory.

 

And the ongoing intelligence war between the United States and Iran will surely complement the intelligence war between Israel and the Islamic Republic. Intelligence cooperation, because it doesn’t usually happen openly, has a certain resilience that defies the passions of the day.

 

Intelligence—operational—success is inevitably tied to how much risk clandestine services and their political overlords want to endure. The Islamic Republic is an existential threat to the Jewish state; to the United States, the clerical regime has been a non-existential but deadly foe.  These differences in perspective and fear are sufficient to explain why the Israelis have had the patience and fortitude to work the Iranian target in ways that have been impossible for American or European intelligence services. But that disparity, besides producing a certain jealousy and sometimes anger inside CIA headquarters at Langley, offers advantages to Washington if it decides to get more serious about aid to the Iranian people. 

 

Jerusalem may well try to do things that Washington may object to: first and foremost, the delivery of large quantities of weaponry to resistance groups inside Iran. The Israelis wanted to do a delivery to the Kurds, who apparently were willing to take the fight to the dominant ethnic group, the Persians, on whom the regime depends. Trump, possibly motivated by a call from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, limited the operation. As a rule, Washington wants to imagine that Iran can come out whole, ideally democratic, after the collapse of the Islamic Republic; the Israelis, as a rule, are far more pessimistic about the evolutionary political possibilities of Muslims. Ethnic warfare inside Iran may appeal to them since accessing minority groups on Iran’s borders is operationally much easier; it would be payback for all of the proxies that Tehran has unleashed on the Jewish state.

 

Moving arms into the hands of Iranians who really matter—and who would know how to use them—would be a long-term project for Jerusalem, or Washington, since there are now, so far as we know, no organized Azeri or Persian opposition groups that could even use this weaponry against the Revolutionary Guards and the street-level security service, the Basij. Delivering weapons to other Iranian ethnic groups that do already have organized, armed outfits—the Kurds and the Baluch—can’t possibly topple the clerical regime. Only the Azeris and Persians, if they rebelled in large numbers, can overcome the status quo. Until such organized outfits exist, any effort to deliver weaponry to where it matters most would just end in delivering arms to the Revolutionary Guards and the Iranian intelligence ministry. It would be quite the trial-and-error process for any foreign power to develop something that the natives haven’t so far figured out how to establish.

 

America and Israel can weaken Iran, but the task of displacing it will surely be up to the Iranian people. All revolutions, at core, are psychological phenomena. Before a decisive mass of people take to and stay in the streets, they must perceive weakness in the regime and a measure of immunity for themselves. Significant defections and dissension within the ruling elite are the necessary precursors to any successful insurrection. Thus far, the Islamic Republic has gone wobbly, but it hasn’t lost its bearings. Still, little operational successes—baby steps for both a foreign intelligence service and Iranian protesters who must prove that they can organize and not get shattered—may open up larger opportunities hitherto unseen.

 

None of the above should offer any immediate hope to the United States, or to the Iranian people. We are now stuck in a predicament where Washington may have already lost a war against a Middle Eastern power that has defined itself in opposition to America. Lost wars always have painful repercussions. But unless the United States is leaving the Middle East with its tail between its legs, a bloody struggle with the Islamic Republic will continue. Iran’s revolutionary elite knows that. Do we?

The Enormous Blast Radius of the NYT’s Dog-Rape Debacle

By Seth Mandel

Monday, May 25, 2026

 

There’s much debate over the implications of Nicholas Kristof’s decision to publish his Israeli-rape-dogs phantasmagoria, but it’s important to widen the lens and examine how this latest disgrace is part of a broad institutional failure inside and outside the media environment that produced it.

 

It has become common to point out the Times’ hypocrisy here by noting that when its opinion section published an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton calling for the tougher policing of riots, the Times unraveled: Opinion Editor James Bennet was pushed out, as were Bari Weiss and Adam Rubenstein.

 

But this purge was more than just a demonstration of elite fragility. It ensured that an ideological monolith would serve as the gatekeepers of future articles. The years that followed October 7 demonstrated how this would apply to anything Israel-related: accusations were published first and investigated later, if at all. Kristof’s article was an escalation in the war on truth, not an innovation.

 

The Times retains a ton of influence over other publications in the same ideological sphere, which includes much of American and British corporate-left media. So the institutional rot isn’t limited to the Times; it seeps into media practices on a much wider scale.

 

Kristof’s article represents the entry of this particular libel into mainstream discourse after months of confinement to the fringes. Now it won’t require anyone else to “report” it to keep it in the news ecosystem. One needs only to reference the New York Times or the scandal Kristof’s claims have kicked off, and voila: Lots of people in establishment media spaces are suddenly talking about imaginary Israeli monster dogs.

 

Moving beyond media, we come to the world of NGOs. In 2014, Matti Friedman explained why these foreign-funded organizations have become important to Mideast-based journalists: They “provide reporters with social circles, romantic partners, and alternative employment—a fact that is more important to reporters now than it has ever been, given the disintegration of many newspapers and the shoestring nature of their Internet successors.… For many foreign journalists, these [NGOs] were not [reporting] targets but sources and friends—fellow members, in a sense, of an informal alliance. This alliance consists of activists and international staffers from the UN and the NGOs; the Western diplomatic corps, particularly in East Jerusalem; and foreign reporters.”

 

Kristof relies on such NGOs as well. One of them is the Committee to Protect Journalists. That organization has, as we have detailed here at Commentary, kept a running list of supposed “journalists” killed by Israel during the war, many of whom are later revealed to have been terrorist operatives for Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad all along. Those revelations come from the “martyrdom” notices of the terror groups themselves, as the researcher Salo Aizenberg has persistently pointed out. When that happens, CPJ tends to delete the terrorist’s name from its list of “journalists.”

 

The Washington Free Beacon argues, persuasively, that this process deeply undercuts CPJ’s credibility as a source and as a gatekeeper of sources for folks like Kristof. I agree. As I wrote two weeks ago: “The problem is that it’s easy for an organization like CPJ to quietly delete someone’s page from a false list well after the fighting stops and the hoax has outlived its usefulness. So that’s what they do.”

 

Others have focused on the fact that Kristof also relied on information from Euro-Med, an organization with ties to terrorist figures and which has perpetuated all sorts of weird science-fiction anti-Israel hoaxes. Because of that history, I tend not to think of Euro-Med as an NGO at all, though technically it is. Euro-Med is despised even by many Palestinians who see it as nothing but a shield for Hamas and therefore an enemy of human rights. But perhaps the point of the story is that more established NGOs have become just as corrupted as organizations like Euro-Med, and that they do belong in the same category after all.

 

In fact, CPJ’s impact could plausibly be considered more deleterious to democracy and human rights than Euro-Med’s precisely because it carries a sheen of legitimacy that Euro-Med never has and never will.

 

I would go a step further and suggest that the behavior of groups like CPJ incentivize the establishment of other groups that exist solely to feed journalists bad information. CPJ’s fall from grace is a major story all its own. That it enables the creation of bad actors that never had any grace to lose is just part of that story. The same is true of the Times.

 

This is not merely a story of one journalist behaving unconscionably. It’s a story of Western institutional collapse and the dreary remnants that rise from the rubble to perpetuate all the evil things its predecessors got away with.

Is Bill Cassidy’s Loss a MAHA Win?

By Grayson Logue

Tuesday, May 26, 2026

 

Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana lost his bid for reelection in the Republican primary earlier this month. He came in third behind a Trump-endorsed challenger, Rep. Julia Letlow, and Louisiana State Treasurer John Fleming, who advanced to a June runoff. Political observers have portrayed Cassidy’s defeat as proof of President Donald Trump’s continued grip over the GOP and a cautionary tale of faltering, principled dissent.

 

Cassidy broke with Trump over the January 6 riot, voting for his impeachment during his Senate trial, but the two-term senator also voted to confirm the face of the modern anti-vaccine movement, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary. 

 

The president and Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) advocates cheered Cassidy’s defeat, but both parties have now lost whatever political leverage they once held over the senator. Cassidy, a physician who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, could be a particular headache as the administration tries to fill vacancies in key Senate-confirmed positions at HHS, including Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director, and surgeon general.

 

One way to read Cassidy’s defeat is a sign of MAHA’s electoral power. MAHA Action, an advocacy group, endorsed Letlow, the leading Cassidy challenger, and MAHA PAC donated $580,000 to her campaign, according to recent Federal Election Commission filings. That’s certainly the story that MAHA PAC and MAHA Action leader Tony Lyons want to tell. “This is a powerful indication that MAHA is a gift to the Republican Party,” he said the day after the primary.

 

Another telling is that MAHA, grasping for relevance in the midterm cycle and struggling for funds, rode the coattails of Trump’s effort to sink Cassidy. At the most proximate level, the reason why Cassidy didn’t make it to the runoff is because Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry pushed through a change to the state’s primaries. Previous primaries had been open to any voters regardless of party affiliation, but only registered Republican voters were eligible to cast ballots in this year’s primary. Unaffiliated moderates and Democrats couldn’t vote for Cassidy unless they changed their registration. Louisiana’s Republican lieutenant governor, who opposed the change, suggested earlier this year that the primary rules were switched with the express goal of ousting Cassidy. MAHA advocates had nothing to do with the change. Fleming, a MAGA Republican that MAHA didn’t endorse, also secured more of the vote than Cassidy.

 

While the White House seems more than happy to pay lip service to MAHA goals while the midterms still loom, Cassidy’s new lame duck status comes at a time when the administration has also pivoted away from vaccine issues and ignored several of the movement’s priorities, including on herbicide use. The question for the movement following Cassidy’s loss is how influential MAHA will be for the administration in 2027 if Democrats secure a wave victory this November. What will the White House’s appetite for iconoclastic HHS leaders and appointees or more vaccine disruptions be after such a loss? In the interim, White House and MAHA will be stuck with Cassidy helming the Senate’s health committee. 

 

Cassidy unbound.

 

Cassidy joked with a reporter last week about possibly being “unbound” since his loss, and he’s wasted little time taking advantage of his newfound freedom. In the 72 hours following his primary loss, Cassidy came out against Trump’s ballroom project and the Justice Department’s recently announced $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund. He vocally defended his January 6 impeachment vote, a subject he’d been quiet about for years, and last Tuesday, he joined Democrats and three of his Republican colleagues in advancing a war-powers resolution to end the Iran war unless the president secured congressional authorization for the conflict. 

 

He has also signaled a readiness to push back on Kennedy and HHS policies he disagrees with. “Absolutely, I’ll hold him accountable, not to be destructive, no, but to be constructive,” Cassidy said Monday when asked about oversight of the health secretary. He also emphasized that the administration has “had some bad policies regarding vaccinations.” Cassidy could use his power as chair to put Kennedy back in the hot seat or hold hearings to scrutinize any undue political influence on scientific decision-making, as he did after Kennedy fired CDC Director Susan Monarez last summer.

 

The administration will need Cassidy and the HELP committee’s cooperation to fill a lengthy list of vacancies at HHS, as well as key posts in other departments, including the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Trump falsely claimed that a lackluster jobs report last summer was “rigged” and promptly fired the previous commissioner.

 

Even before the primary, Cassidy had shown some willingness to push back on White House picks for CDC director and surgeon general. The administration has had to withdraw previous HHS nominees after it became clear they wouldn’t make it through the HELP committee, including Dave Weldon for CDC director and, more recently, Casey Means for surgeon general. “If you look at the HELP committee, there’s already been some back and forth regarding nominees,” Cassidy told NOTUS last week. “Am I going to deliberately push back on things? No. I’m going to do what’s good for my country and my state.”

 

Setbacks for MAHA.

 

In April, the president announced Dr. Erica Schwartz, the deputy surgeon general in his first administration, as his new nominee for CDC director and Dr. Nicole Saphier, a radiologist and a frequent Fox Business contributor, for surgeon general. A HELP spokesperson told The Dispatch that the committee is still waiting on paperwork on Schwartz and Saphier from the Office of Government Ethics to begin consideration of their nominations.

 

Sean Kaufman, an infectious disease specialist and biosecurity consultant, was also nominated last month to lead the health department’s public health emergency response agency, which has been without a permanent leader since Trump took office. The White House has yet to name a nominee to replace Marty Makary as FDA commissioner.

 

MAHA activists castigated Cassidy over the failure of the Means nomination, but the movement’s influence on HHS appointments could continue to suffer as a result of Cassidy’s loss. Schwartz and Saphier are much more traditional picks than a figure like Means. The American Public Health Association endorsed Schwartz as qualified for the post.

 

Both Schwartz and Saphier are broadly supportive of vaccines, though Saphier has signaled openness to making changes to the childhood vaccine schedule and opposes vaccine mandates. But she has also vocally defended vaccines as critical tools to prevent illness and infectious disease and criticized the way Kennedy changed federal vaccine guidance.

 

“I did think the original CDC vaccine schedule was somewhat bloated,” Saphier said on her podcast in March. “I thought we could scale back on certain things. Some of the things RFK Jr. has done, you know, I wasn’t staunchly opposed to, but the way that it has been communicated makes it seem that changes are being done because they found new evidence showing it’s not safe or it’s not effective, and that’s just not true.” She also publicly criticized Trump over his claims about the dangers of Tylenol for pregnant women and how the administration is handling a forthcoming assessment about the country’s measles elimination status, suggesting the study was purposefully delayed until after the midterm elections.

 

Of course, any tempering influence Cassidy exerts will end when he leaves the Senate in January, and Sen. Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican, is reportedly angling to take over the HELP chairmanship if the GOP keeps control of the Senate. Marshall is an OB-GYN and a MAHA ally who disagreed with Cassidy on vaccines, particularly over whether the hepatitis B vaccine should be given at birth. He’s also been a Kennedy defender, saying during the secretary’s nomination hearing, “I think that you are the person to lead HHS to make America healthy again, that God has a divine purpose for you.” 

 

But the senate-confirmed HHS vacancies will more than likely be filled by then, and MAHA’s influence over the administration’s health policy and personnel appears on a downward trajectory. The administration is continuing to replace HHS appointees allied with Kennedy and backed by MAHA. Earlier this month, the administration fired Tracy Beth Høeg, the FDA’s top drug regulator and the co-author of a report justifying Kennedy’s overhaul of the childhood vaccine schedule earlier this year.

Do You Trust Trump to Make a Deal?

By Jeffrey Blehar

Tuesday, May 26, 2026

 

Well, it was inauspicious timing given the solemnity of the holiday weekend, I’ll start with that. For those unaware, President Donald Trump kicked off the long weekend by announcing on Friday that he was in advanced negotiations with the Iranian regime about a 60-day cease-fire that would lead to the end of the war:

 

I am in the Oval Office at the White House where we just had a very good call with President Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, of The United Arab Emirates, Emir Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, and Minister Ali al-Thawadi, of Qatar, Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir Ahmed Shah, of Pakistan, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, of Türkiye, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, of Egypt, King Abdullah II, of Jordan, and King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, of Bahrain, concerning the Islamic Republic of Iran, and all things related to a Memorandum of Understanding pertaining to PEACE. An Agreement has been largely negotiated, subject to finalization between the United States of America, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the various other Countries, as listed. Separately, I had a call with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, of Israel, which, likewise, went very well. Final aspects and details of the Deal are currently being discussed, and will be announced shortly. In addition to many other elements of the Agreement, the Strait of Hormuz will be opened. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP

 

Nobody (outside the named parties, perhaps) knows what this means. And I mean nobody. Almost immediately after the post was made, Iranian regime sources hotly contested every word of it, saying the regime would be assuming full sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz and would never forfeit their weapons-grade nuclear material or forgo the goal of building a nuclear program. Then, as details of the purported deal emerged — including the potential unfreezing of billions of confiscated Iranian assets as a payoff — Trump took to Truth Social to back and fill, saying he wouldn’t “rush” a deal, or that he might make no deal at all, or that he might agree to a five-day delay to negotiate a 60-day truce to negotiate a final settlement, etc.

 

The point is that nobody knows what’s happening, only that Trump is engaging in his typical political methods of bluster and delay. And this is fitting, since he is dealing with a legendarily dilatory set of negotiators in the Iranian regime, who are no doubt aware of the rhythms of American electoral politics. (“Just remember, the Iranians never won a war, but they never lost a negotiation!” — Donald Trump, 2019.) Since I cannot know what the final terms of this deal are — or whether the publicly enunciated terms will bear any resemblance to the military and diplomatic reality — it would be pointless to focus on specifics.

 

So what to make of the situation? Nothing, except to fall back on common sense and all prior experience with Trump: He blundered, he’s in a jam, and he is desperate to at least pretend that he has wriggled his way out of it. I’ll wait until he declares victory and goes home to offer my opinion on the matter, but if you’ve been reading my work, you can already guess where I’ll be falling in my judgment. I could tell you I’m waiting to offer it because I’m uncertain of the final outcome, but in truth I just don’t feel like discussing it on Memorial Day.

 

Don’t Go Away Mad, Thomas, Just Go Away

 

You may have noticed that I was notably more muted than many of my colleagues about the defeat of Thomas Massie in last week’s Kentucky primary. Believe me, it’s not because I have ever doubted that he is a lunatic. Perhaps it’s because I feel I’m better at explaining the forces currently animating our politics when I detach my analysis from my moral judgment — which I’ve proven pretty bad at doing, in any event. (It is a “historicizing” tendency, and perhaps a mistake — forever trying to grasp a “big picture” even as it is unfolding in real time. Our current chaos will cohere into a true narrative only after it has washed over us. “May you live in interesting times,” as they say.)

 

But it really is worth emphasizing that Massie is a lunatic, and I am emphatically happy to see the back of him despite the appalling amount of money wasted on a safe-seat primary race. He long ago crossed over the “is he or isn’t he an antisemite?” line into a full-blown troll. (This is seemingly the fate of all such edgelords.) And now that he’s on his way out, he’s determined to leave as gracelessly as possible, screeching like a feral cat being dragged out of the House chamber by its tail.

 

On the night of his eight-point defeat, last Tuesday, Massie immediately demonstrated a level of public class that he had heretofore mostly kept between him and his (alienated) colleagues in D.C.: “I would’ve come out sooner, but I had to call my opponent and concede. And it took a while to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv.” Geddit? Gallrein is a Zionist pawn! Forget that Massie got on Trump’s bad side for one real reason only: his maneuvering to toss a PR grenade into the administration’s works with the release of the so-called Epstein files. Forget that he has voted against every single one of the administration’s economic moves (for this I don’t even necessarily fault him, but it’s bound to enrage others). No, it really just comes down to the Jews again. If that’s the way Massie wants to characterize it, who are we to deny the man’s testimony?

 

Massie then went on Meet the Press to participate in the typical loser’s interview. A man who once declared that he would retire to off-the-grid obscurity should he ever be rejected by the voters bleated about the “Epstein class” and publicly declined to say whether he’ll run for office again. He has chosen to keep his options officially open; who knows if Massie will come crawling out of the woods of rural Kentucky in the future to reclaim his patrimony?

 

Either way, I don’t care. I invite him to try, of course — it’s a free country, and I write about clowns for a living.

The Disappearing Reappearing Iran Deal

National Review Online

Monday, May 25, 2026

 

In response to hawkish critics of the reported outlines of a memorandum of understanding with Iran, President Trump said he doesn’t cut bad deals. Well, okay, but how about middling deals after an adversary seizes a strategic asset that we haven’t managed to take back?

 

Negotiations remain in flux and are the subject of leaks and counter-leaks, but reports indicate that the U.S. and Iran have been closing in on a deal to trade our blockade of Iran for a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, with a continuation of the cease-fire for 60 days to allow more time for nuclear negotiations.

 

The U.S. is saying that Iran is making commitments to give up its highly enriched uranium and suspend enrichment for some period of time, but the Iranians aren’t confirming this, and they’d have every incentive to string a second phase of negotiations out as long as possible. If there is an initial deal in the coming days, the most certain result would be a lifting of the dueling U.S. and Iranian blockades, while everything else would be a jump ball.

 

The critics of this framework are correct that with our blockade lifted and Trump clearly reluctant to restart bombing, we’d lose crucial leverage over Iran. This would especially be the case if we give the Iranians any sanctions relief up front. We’d be going from “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” to TBD on the crucial nuclear issues.

 

The problem is that once Iran took effective control of the strait and we weren’t willing to undertake a complex, protracted military action to reestablish freedom of navigation, Tehran had a significant strategic chit to play. And so we are now using our blockade to try to force a return of the Strait of Hormuz to the status quo ante. Even that might be overly hopeful, since Iran has now proved that it can easily interrupt international commerce, and even if it formally agrees not to toll the strait, it may extract revenue in some other form.

 

Trump deserves credit for his willingness to take action to try to topple the regime or, failing that, end its nuclear program. But this operation was beset by overly optimistic assumptions from the beginning. Trump seems to have believed that killing Ayatollah Khamenei would end the regime or produce a more pliable leadership. When that didn’t happen, the hope was that a punishing air campaign against Iranian military and industrial capacities would make Tehran buckle, and when that also didn’t happen, we were stuck.

 

The Pentagon and the more boosterish supporters of the war tended to recite all the targets we had hit, as though this equaled strategic success, when it didn’t necessarily connect to such bigger objectives as toppling the regime, getting Iran to agree to end its nuclear program, or (after the war had started) reopening the strait.

 

We degraded Iran’s arsenal of missiles and its capacity to build more but also depleted our own stocks, which has probably played into Trump’s reluctance to start the shooting war again.

 

On top of this, Trump did nothing to make the case for the war beforehand, when he should have sought congressional authorization for it. That the war had limited political support from the outset has clearly constrained the president, who has conducted the war with an eye on high gas prices and the conflict’s persistently poor polling.

 

Much depends on the details of any eventual deal; aware of discontent among his pro-war supporters, Trump has said he’s in no rush to sign anything.

 

Even in the worst case, Iran is going to end up in a reduced position from October 6, 2023. Its proxies have been devastated; much of its nuclear infrastructure has been wrecked; and its industrial plants have been hit hard, when its economy was already in crisis prior to the war. But whatever sanctions relief or revenue from the strait that it gets will be poured into rebuilding. Meanwhile, the regime has to assume it can wait Trump out, hoping that anti-war Democrats win in 2026 and that any presidential successor in 2028 won’t be willing to risk open conflict once again.

 

If an eventual deal is unsatisfactory, it won’t be because the president’s negotiating skills are lacking but because we weren’t able or willing to set the military conditions for successful diplomacy, most importantly by failing to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Judgment Night Is upon Us in Texas

By Jeffrey Blehar

Tuesday, May 26, 2026

 

It’s Tuesday, it’s primary season, and Memorial Day was only yesterday. So you know what that means: It’s time to haul another incumbent Republican up onto the grill and get to barbecuing a once-safe Senate seat until it’s properly mesquite-smoked and shredded, Texas-style. At this point, I should hardly need to recap the situation in the Texas Republican Senate primary, but I’m going to anyway: Disaffected primary voters denied veteran Senator John Cornyn renomination in late March, keeping him well under the 50 percent required to proceed to the general election without a runoff. Cornyn finished ahead of expectations, however, edging out state Attorney General Ken Paxton 42 to 40 percent.

 

Donald Trump promised an endorsement mere days later and was widely expected to endorse Cornyn in light of his strong showing, history of legislative loyalty, and popularity amongst his colleagues. Then Paxton played (cynically but brilliantly) to Trump’s vanity and myopic obsessions by publicly volunteering to leave the race . . . but only if the narrow Senate Republican majority eliminated the filibuster and passed the SAVE Act, Trump’s pet “federalize the elections” bill. Paxton well understood that the Senate could not and would not do this — especially at a moment when Republicans seem more likely than ever to be heading into a minority — so it was a cost-free play.

 

And apparently it worked on Trump, who endorsed Paxton on May 19, a week before the election. I discussed then Trump’s reasoning for stabbing a loyal senator in the back — the president could have stayed out of the race altogether, and I had come to expect he would — but ultimately it boils down to Trump’s need to be able to claim responsibility for a victory. He craves loyal yes-men, but he needs winners. Trump is more desperate than ever to pick winners and losers as he flails globally, a reminder of his strength with the base. So he picked the way an off-track bettor reasons through a sports gamble and chose Paxton because Paxton has always looked more likely to consolidate the remaining anti-Cornyn vote that had gone to third-place finisher Wesley Hunt. Trump doesn’t give his loyalty to losers, he gives his blessing to winners, and the odds favor Paxton.

 

All of this is happening, of course, despite the fact that Paxton is uniquely vulnerable for a Texas Republican running in 2026 — in a way that would put Ted Cruz’s 2018 reelection travails to shame — because of his spectacularly ghastly corruption and decrepit personal life. To name but one example: Paxton fired multiple whistleblowers in the Texas attorney general’s office for revealing that they had been forced to employ one of his mistresses, and then he was forced by a district court to pay out $6.6 million in damages to them, all with taxpayer dollars. (What if I told you that barely begins to scratch the surface with Paxton?)

 

So I say to you once again, as I have been for the past several months: If you live in Texas and you haven’t voted in the Republican primary yet, vote for John Cornyn.

 

Most election analysts I know will tell you that even if Paxton wins tonight, the Texas seat is still defendable — the uncharismatic James Talarico is going to be an extremely hard sale statewide for Democrats. But at what cost? Recall the unexpected money pit that opened up in the 2018 Texas race, when the scandal-free Cruz nearly blew a seat to Beto O’Rourke. You can tell me that Texas is redder now than it was then, and I would not disagree with you; I can tell you that Texas is much more expensive to campaign and advertise in now than it was then, and you cannot disagree with me.

 

It will cost a disgusting amount of money to defend this seat with someone as polarizing and (justly) attacked as Paxton. I already railed about the absurdity of Thomas Massie’s House primary becoming the single most expensive primary of all time, but know this right now: If Paxton is the GOP’s avatar in November, the Texas Senate race will become a sinkhole legendary among Senate races, with Republicans and their allies pouring in tens of millions of dollars they will intensely regret not spending in states such as Ohio, Iowa, and Georgia.

 

Either way, we’ll know by tonight.