Story #1

The New York Times has the definitive take on so-called dark money — untraceable political donations that leverage favors from U.S. politicians while their wealthy donors remain anonymous.

It may be the single most pernicious cornerstone of modern American politics.

“All across America, the midterm elections are drowning in dark money,” writes my former National Journal colleague Shane Goldmacher.

“A New York Times review of advertising data, campaign-finance filings, and tax records revealed that about $1 billion in anonymous money is sloshing through the political landscape in 2026, a staggering sum and yet almost certainly a low-end estimate, given how difficult this money is to trace,” Goldmacher writes with co-author Theodore Schleifer.

The sum is more than “enough money to manipulate a lot of politicians and to put a lot of poison in the blood of the American political system,” Nick Penniman, the chief executive of Issue One, a group that has sought to reduce the role of money in politics, tells The Times.

It is a both-sides travesty. In an analysis of the nearly $2 billion in dark money spent to influence the 2024 elections, the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal nonprofit law and public policy institute, reported:

Both Democrats and Republicans benefited from hundreds of millions of dollars in dark money in 2024. More spending backed Democrats, as has been the case since the 2018 midterm elections (before which more dark money typically favored Republicans). The presidential race was the source of much of this disparity in last year’s cycle.

Overall, dark money groups boosting Democrats put up about $1.2 billion to influence 2024 elections, while groups boosting Republicans accounted for about $664 million,

It’s bad enough that the concerns of American voters are largely unaddressed or unresolved by the two-party system. The least politicians could do is disclose who they’re actually working for.

Which leads me to the next story …

Story #2

For most Americans, the cost of living is climbing faster than their salaries. People are choosing between buying groceries and paying for their prescription drugs. Millions of people are one major household expense — maybe a broken water heater — from skipping their rent payments and facing eviction.

But corporate America is booming!

“Profits are booming at America’s biggest companies—and their leaders say that likely won’t change soon,” The Wall Street Journal gushes.

From Target and J.M. Smucker to farm-equipment maker Deere, companies spanning the breadth of the U.S. economy are ringing up heftier sales and earnings. In recent days, many have raised financial outlooks for the year, citing robust sales as just one of the reasons.

Chalk the good times up to a confluence of fortunate events: red-hot artificial-intelligence spending, federal spending, and the windfall companies are getting in the form of refunds of some of their past tariff payments. Plus, a booming stock market and high home values are helping many shoppers keep spending, even as plenty of others struggle to absorb rising prices.

Some fraction of these gargantuan profits gets converted to dark money contributions to both political parties that, in their own ways, bow to corporate America.

This gap between the haves and have-nots is not sustainable.

IF YOU FIND any value in these free newsletters, level up to a paid subscription to support my work and get the daily “Morning Read-In,” where I curate the most compelling stories on politics, culture, communications, and life — with micro-essays of insight via the Subscriber-only chat feature.

Today’s pre-dawn MRI featured eight stories including the two above and:

• The Trump administration’s shitstorm

• Google’s cowardice

• The one thing Trump and congressional Democrats both want

• Trump’s latest attack on free speech

• A military officer’s lesson on the limits of free speech

• The renewal of military action against Iran

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PRESIDENT TRUMP and his allies plan to protest — and ultimately overturn — any election outcomes in November that don’t favor Republicans, abusing presidential powers to make baseless claims about noncitizens voting and act upon them.

My former colleagues at The Associated Press have receipts:

• Trump is pushing to have the U.S. Postal Service send mail ballots only to voters the administration considers to be U.S. citizens.

• At his direction, the Census Bureau promoted a dubious report about thousands of noncitizens voting in 2020, when Trump lost to Joe Biden.

• His Department of Homeland Security claims without evidence that 250,000 noncitizens might be on the rolls in just four states.

• A GOP candidate for governor in Maine says he plans to ask Trump’s border czar to send U.S. marshals and ICE agents to polling places. He says their job will be to ensure that only legal voters are casting ballots. But Trump would almost certainly use them in the same manner he adopted with Georgia’s secretary of state in 2021: “Find 11,780 votes,” the president hissed — the precise number he needed to steal the 2020 election.

Mike Catalini and Ali Swenson expose the Trump playbook:

In fact, voting by noncitizens is extremely rare and is punishable as a felony that carries the potential for deportation. Even so, opponents say the hyperfocus on the issue by Trump and his allies is setting the stage for legal challenges to outcomes he may not like during the midterms in which control of Congress is on the line.

“Throw out these deceitful, deceptive claims as an excuse for disruptions,” said Alexandra Chandler, director of impact programs, free and fair elections at the nonpartisan Democracy Project. “You can deny the results later.”

Best-case scenario: Trump doesn’t dispute or lie about an election result, which given his history, is hard to imagine — even if Republicans retain control of Congress.

Worst-case scenario: Republicans lose in November and Trump uses the noncitizen voter scheme to overturn the results, which could make 2024 America’s last democratic election. This is not an unfathomable outcome.

IF YOU FIND any value in these free newsletters, level up to a paid subscription to support my work and get the daily “Morning Read-In,” where I curate the most compelling stories on politics, culture, communications, and life — with micro-essays of insight via the Subscriber-only chat feature.

Today’s pre-dawn MRI featured five stories including the one above and:

• Why passengers pat their planes while boarding.

• The definitive take on Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial.

• An influencer who crossed a few lines, became a victim of his own success, made a small fortune, and now wishes that none of it had happened.

• A warning from U.S. military brass: Trump’s war with Iran has made America more vulnerable elsewhere.

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FOR MORE THAN two decades, social media devolved unregulated into a toxic dump that poisons our lives and culture. We can’t make the same mistake with AI.

Radically connecting people without legal or social guardrails had its benefits, but the negative consequences were left unchecked.

Radically connecting AI bots without legal or social guardrails could be exponentially worse.

Today’s top two stories explain why.

THIS IS A TRUE STORY, not one ripped from the pages of a science fiction novel: Some 1,200 different AI bots evaded internal controls at ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and spoke to each other on a message board, exchanging 70,000 messages in a single week-long period in July.

About 700 of them went on to attack a competing AI company, Hugging Face, according to a report from METR and Redwood Research.

Then the bots tried to cover their tracks, editing their previous statements and trying to hack the monitoring systems.

When computers think for themselves, learn from their experiences, band together, and destroy the work of humans, how far can we be from a sci-fi dystopia?

What are government and other institutions doing about it?

What can they do?

HOPING TO STOP an avalanche of lawsuits over the exploitation of children on social media, Meta agreed Wednesday to pay up to $18 billion and add stronger child-safety measures to its Facebook and Instagram platforms.

The new measures include screen time limits and a default ban on activity during late nights and school hours, both designed to protect teens from excessive use.

The agreement settles a pivotal lawsuit accusing the tech giant of contributing to the youth mental health crisis by deliberately designing features that addict children to its platforms and hiding them from the public. The case also argued that Meta violated federal laws by routinely collecting data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent.

The money would be divided among 48 states, proportional to their populations, over 10 years and end the legal cases prosecuted by those states. The company still faces lawsuits from individuals and school districts throughout the U.S.

Meta won’t miss the cash. The company made $60 billion in profit last year on $201 billion in revenue.

For the states, the money will fund mental-health programs for children, including after-school or summer activities and digital literacy counselors. That assumes the money is spent well. Opioid manufacturers agreed to a $50 billion settlement with state and local governments for remediating the epidemic; the results were mixed.

IF YOU FIND any value in these newsletters, level up to a paid subscription to support my work and get the daily “Morning Read-In,” where I curate the most compelling stories on politics, culture, communications, and life — with micro-essays of insight via the Subscriber-only chat feature.

Today’s MRI featured 9 stories like the ones featured above. Stop missing out.

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WHEN PRESIDENT TRUMP first took office on Jan. 20, 2017, the U.S. gross national debt was about $19.947 trillion.

When President Biden took over for Trump on Jan. 20, 2021, the debt was about $27.75 trillion.

When Trump retook the presidency on January 20, 2025, the debt was about $36.2 trillion.

And now, not even halfway into his second term, Trump has driven the debt up to a record $40 trillion, twice what he inherited from President Obama in 2017.

He did so by slashing taxes, mostly for upper-income Americans, waging an unauthorized and unpopular war on Iran, and paying soaring interest rates to investors who purchased the nation’s debt — while shredding the nation’s social safety net.

Not to mention the billions of dollars he’s spending on renovations in Washington that we could do without.

All this from a president who promised to balance the budget. His government-busting buddy, Elon Musk, projected $2 trillion in savings that never surfaced.

“The scariest thing about this is how we’re starting to see the debt spiral begin,” Marc Goldwein, senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told The New York Times. He was referring to the fact that payments to debt-buying investors now make up about half of the red ink.

He could have mentioned that:

• The total U.S. public debt is nearly 125% of the Gross Domestic Product.

• The debt has doubled in the last 10 years and quadrupled in less than 20.

• The $40 trillion is the equivalent of almost $117,000 of debt for every single person in the United States.

• By some estimates, at the current pace, a $50 trillion national debt is only about six years away.

Don’t let anybody tell you this is no big deal. It’s unsustainable. At some point soon, an American president will be forced to make hard choices that will cause a lot of suffering — and that’s the best-case scenario.

IF YOU FIND any value in these newsletters, level up to a paid subscription to support my work and get the daily “Morning Read-In,” where I curate the most compelling stories on politics, culture, communications, and life — with micro-essays of insight via the Subscriber-only chat feature.

Today’s MRI featured 6 stories, including a shorter version on the U.S. debt. Also:

• An essay on Bill Clinton’s character.

• Trump’s renovating hobby trumps his day job.

• Prince Harry and Meghan head back across the pond.

• The hidden hand behind Pete Hegseth has colored nails.

• Trump declares “Economic D-Day.” Iran shrugs.

Illustration for Convulsion by Nadine Rewa. Read the story behind it here.

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I DON’T KNOW whether President Trump is having sex with a White House aide whom the New York Times calls “a platinum blonde geyser of positivity.” I don’t care to know. But I agree with administration officials who privately call the relationship unhealthy and … icky.

Here are three takes on Natalie Harp, the 35-year-old cancer survivor thrust into the spotlight last week by Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, who said of the president: “He doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.”

TAKE 1

Shawn McCreesh and Maggie Haberman deliver a deeply reported, lively profile for the Times.

• They call Harp “a one-woman conduit of information operating entirely outside the usual chain of command.”

• Also: a “seldom-heard-from and sylphlike woman who has long fascinated and frustrated people around the president.”

• They got their hands on a letter she wrote to Trump. It says, “I want things to always be right between us. I also know I’ve been distracted all week (forgetting to eat throughout the days, and even forgetting to sleep, and only catching a couple of hours at a time).”

• The letter concludes: “With all my heart, Natalie.”

• They say “she enjoys an unvetted flow of information, some of it poisonous and counterproductive, at least as far as a number of his other advisers are concerned. She supplies him with content she fishes out of the social media gutter (like the video he posted depicting the Obamas as apes) and provides him with a view from the world outside official Washington, of which he has always been mistrustful. Her moniker is ‘the human printer,’ because she tails the president with a portable printer so she can hand him information in hard copy.”

• They wrote as their lede: “She never takes a day off, not even on Sunday. She works out of the Oval Office, and she’s got a regular seat on Marine One. She texts with world leaders on the president’s behalf. She stays up late with him drafting social media posts.”

TAKE 2

Philip Wegmann, Meridith McGraw and Josh Dawsey entered the fray for the Wall Street Journal.

• They called Harp “an omnipresent figure at Trump’s side, standing just off camera during Oval Office events, traveling with the president around the country and the world, and tapping out his social-media posts.”

• Also: “She sits at a desk immediately outside the Oval Office. During meetings, Harp can often be found next to Trump, armed with a laptop and phones so she can quickly get the president any contact or piece of information he needs, the officials said.”

• They cited current and former administration officials calling her “practically untouchable.”

• They said Harp serves as both a buffer and sounding board for Trump, “a role that has at times frustrated some White House staff, according to people familiar with the matter. Some administration officials have privately complained that Harp has shown the president material from far-right groups that is riddled with false or misleading information.”

• They said she keeps an insane schedule. “White House officials say Harp hasn’t taken a single vacation day since joining the Trump administration and remains in constant contact with the president, sitting in on Situation Room meetings, Oval Office meetings, and meetings aboard Air Force One in his private office.”

• They say Trump views Harp almost as part of his family. “Once, after his Georgia indictment, Trump remarked on his private plane that Harp is the only one who actually cares about him, according to a person familiar with the remarks.”

• They wrote as their lede: “Sen. Jon Ossoff didn’t even use her full name. But everybody in Washington knew who he was talking about.”

TAKE 3

Editorial cartoonist Rick McKee cheekily connects two of Trump’s most cozy relationships in a three-panel story.

IF YOU FIND any value in these newsletters, level up to a paid subscription to support my work and get the daily “Morning Read-In,” where I curate the most compelling stories on politics, culture, communications, and life — with micro-essays of insight via the Subscriber-only chat feature.

Today’s MRI featured 7 stories, including:

• Trump plans a partial military withdrawal from the Middle East, a bow to Iran’s attacks on U.S. military bases.

• Democratic voters in Florida were of two minds when they cast primary ballots Tuesday.

• ABC sued Trump administration for silencing speech.

• Trump plans to open 45 million acres of U.S. national forests to logging.

• Trump’s approval rating hit its lowest mark.

• Lindsey Graham’s sister fumbled a softball question.

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SIXTY DAYS AGO, President Trump and Iran agreed to a truce and jointly set a 60-day deadline to reach a deal to curtail Iran’s nuclear program. Trump declared victory.

Sixty days later, there is no nuclear deal. There is no peace. There is no free flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran blocked after Israel and the United States attacked in late February.

Today’s milestone, according to The New York Times, “shows how Mr. Trump has struggled to achieve his war aims — like forcing Iran to curtail its nuclear ambitions — and how emboldened the Iranian government feels, with the two countries at risk of further military conflict.”

If Trump ends his term with Iran still operating a nuclear program and hassling ships in the Strait of Hormuz, history will call him a failed commander in chief. A loser.

IRAN’S “SECRET PLAN” to escalate the war started by Trump and Israel is revealed today by the Wall Street Journal. It leverages the president’s miscalculations about Tehran’s resilience and resolve.

Their efforts include giving the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps more control of the country’s regular army, appointing hardened veterans of the war with Iraq and past internal crackdowns to key posts, expanding domestic counterintelligence operations, and ramping up production of missiles and drones. The leadership quickly seized the initiative, attacking ships to tighten Iran’s grip on Hormuz and expanding the battlefield to the Red Sea, which Saudi Arabia has used to get around Iran’s chokehold on the Persian Gulf.

Citing Iran and Arab officials, reporters Benoit Faucon and Summer Said report that Iran saw through Trump’s ruse 60 days ago. “Instead of putting faith in talks,” the reporters write about the Iranian leadership, “they took the past two months to prepare for a bigger fight.”

Arab intelligence officials have picked up evidence—including communications between Iran and militia allies in countries such as Yemen and Iraq—of a strategic shift inside the country’s hard-line leadership to get their forces ready to widen the war and raise the costs for the U.S., officials familiar with the findings say. Alarming weaker Gulf countries like Kuwait, Iran’s leaders are increasingly talking about offensive operations on enemy territory.

Iran plans to take the fight to the United States.

Their overriding goal is to inflict enough pain to ensure the kind of attacks Iran has endured with the 12-day war last year and the continuing conflict aren’t repeated.

“There is also a widespread view in Iran that the main war has not yet begun,” said Mohammad Hassan Sangtarash, a Tehran-based defense analyst close to the Iranian government. “What we have seen so far is increasingly interpreted through the lens of ‘salami-slicing’ tactics—limited, incremental escalation designed to weaken capabilities before a larger confrontation.”

Iran’s leadership doesn’t seem to have much respect for Trump.

The Iranian preparations point to an enormous gulf between how Washington and Tehran are perceiving this stage of the war. The divergence has driven a hard-line negotiating stance and reluctance to close deals by Iran’s leaders that has persistently flummoxed Trump, who has called them crazy and accused them of lying.

The WSJ reporters don’t buy the spin from either side of the war.

Iran’s proclamations include plenty of bravado. The country’s military and economic base have been battered by U.S. and Israeli airstrikes. More pragmatic members of the leadership including Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian have repeatedly warned Iran needs to negotiate a deal to end the war that brings sanctions relief or face the collapse of its economy.

But Iran is rebuilding its infrastructure and restoring access to missile bases much more quickly than expected, a concern to Israeli officials who are familiar with the progress. It also has successfully targeted U.S. bases and retains enough firepower to threaten ships and Gulf energy infrastructure. Arab officials are bracing for continued fighting and an extended disruption of energy supplies.

The bottom line is alarming.

For the regime, “the baseline is war,” said Alan Eyre, a former senior U.S. diplomat and nuclear negotiator with Iran. “Iran will remain on a wartime footing, preparing for a subsequent attack.”

IF YOU FIND any value in these newsletters, level up to a paid subscription to support my work and get the daily “Morning Read-In,” where I curate the most compelling stories on politics, culture, communications, and life — with micro-essays of insight via the Subscriber-only chat feature.

Today’s MRI featured eight stories, including:

• A Financial Times poll that Trump does not want to read, but you do.

• Two outrageous excuses Trump gave for curtailing joining military exercises with South Korea.

• Trump’s spin on his vanity ballroom.

• The death of baseball’s “Bionic Man.”

• Attorney General Todd Blanche pledges of allegiance to Trump.

• How Democrats can reclaim “freedom” and “capitalism” from the GOP.

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EARLY ONE MORNING, during George W. Bush’s presidency, I got an urgent call from Mary Matalin, Vice President Dick Cheney’s spokeswoman, who wanted to use The Associated Press to inform the American public about Cheney’s latest heart scare. Taking the call outside the earshot of my young children, I stood on the back porch of my suburban Washington home to take notes and dictate the story to an AP editor — in my underwear.

This odd memory comes to mind after reading a New York Times op-ed by Dr. Jonathan Reiner, Cheney’s cardiologist at the time. He suggests President Trump is hiding his ill health.

Despite reassurances from the White House to the contrary, at times over the past year, the president has not looked well. I am not Mr. Trump’s doctor, and have only reviewed his records that have been made public. But Mr. Trump is probably the most photographed president in American history, and a variety of physical ailments are easy to see. He’s had large bruises on both hands, swelling in his legs, and episodes when it appears that he is struggling to stay awake. He’s also had advanced imaging performed for unclear reasons. The public is again left to wonder whether the nation’s leader is OK.

Despite the unparalleled power afforded to the president of the United States, there is no formal requirement for the commander in chief to certify his fitness for duty. That’s a mistake. Members of the military, Secret Service agents, commercial pilots, school bus drivers, and air traffic controllers all must periodically demonstrate that they are well enough to perform their work. The current practice of reporting the results of a yearly medical examination for the president began in the Nixon administration, but it’s only a custom, not a formal obligation. And, as history has shown, it can be unreliable.

Dr. Reiner, a professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University, catalogues the red flags on Trump in detail, then demands disclosure.

“Some people would argue that these personal medical details are more than the public deserves to know: After all, Buckingham Palace has not revealed many details about King Charles’s cancer or his treatment.”

“But the United States does not have a king,” he writes. “In a representative democracy, the people must have confidence in the health of their leader, and in the leader’s capacity to guide the nation. We have been kept in the dark too long.”

Cheney, one of the most powerful vice presidents in American history, died in November 2025 due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease. I still occasionally write in my underwear.

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THE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL campaign of 2026 is over and the results signal a potential extinction event for the Democratic Party establishment.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed defeated Rep. Haley Stevens in a Senate primary ripe with signposts about the future of the Democratic Party and American politics writ large. It pitted:

• An agent of change versus the belle of the status quo.

• An ultra-left candidate versus a moderate.

• A pro-Palestinian candidate versus a pro-Israel candidate.

• A Muslim versus a Christian.

• A charismatic populist versus a gritty pragmatist.

• The Left’s momentum versus the Establishment’s money.

After a brutal and expensive campaign that also reflected the nation’s gender wars, the underfunded charismatic progressive pro-Palestinian Muslim insurgent narrowly won. It was an astonishing result for anybody not paying attention to the cultural and political shifts in America since the turn of the century.

While El-Sayed’s margin of victory was far closer than expected, that says more about lousy polling in Michigan than broader political trends. Yes, he needs to drag Black and blue-collar Stevens voters into his coalition, but take a step back and consider this: In normal times, an ultra-progressive Muslim populist would not defeat a moderate establishment-backed Christian in a purple state like Michigan. In normal times, a candidate like El-Sayed would not stand a chance in a general election.

These are not normal times.

The public has lost faith with the social institutions that are the glue to a functional democracy. Government, politics, corporations, the media, organized religion, organized labor, banks, businesses, and other mainstays of a healthy society have failed to adapt quickly enough for a population buffeted by wrenching economic, technological, and demographic change. The 9/11 terrorist attacks, the 2008 financial crisis, forever wars, toxic new media, a pandemic, and durable inflation — while one crisis after another pushes everyday Americans to the brink, what has been the response from the two major parties blessed with a monopoly over the U.S. political system? Dysfunction, corruption, and polarization.

History tells us that times like these give rise to populists.

It happened first on the right with the Tea Party in 2009 and President Trump’s MAGA movement in 2016. Populist voters and the opportunists they put in office exiled the GOP establishment to the political sidelines.

At a micro level, El-Sayed is a better political athlete than Stevens. His victory is owed in part to lingering animus among Muslims and young Michiganders for how those voters’ pro-Palestinian views were dismissed and denounced in 2024 by Democratic leaders, including presidential candidate Kamala Harris. But something bigger is at play here. As I wrote the other day, this race was a metaphor for a radically shifting U.S. political landscape.

It’s a competition between the establishment wing of an ossified party and insurgent outsiders who believe their team has grown too soft, too moderate, and too accommodating toward the opposing party. These disruptors don’t forgive compromise or dissent. They embrace labels and push policies that would have seemed unfathomable just a few years ago. Does any of this sound familiar?

Even if you, like me, consider MAGA and President Trump to be malignant cancers on the body politic, you can’t ignore the fact that a growing swell of American voters is rightfully disgusted with how both parties are leveraging their monopolies — and this rise of insurgents on the far right and far left may soon lead to a radical realignment of U.S. politics.

Nor was El-Sayed’s victory an isolated event. A grass-roots organizer and climate activist from the progressive wing of the party prevailed in the Democratic primary for a battleground House district near Lansing. Radical populists are winning Democratic primaries throughout the country. Radical populists now run the GOP.

Here’s a provocative question: What do El-Sayed Democrats and Trump Republicans have in common? Answer: They’re mortal enemies of the status quo … of The Establishment … of anybody or anything that has been in control of government and politics since the turn of the century.

I’m not declaring the Democratic Party establishment extinct today, not before the next two election cycles reveal more insights. But one party has already killed its dinosaurs. Who’s to say the Democratic establishment isn’t next?

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HOURS AFTER Truth Social started charging Wall Street clients up to $1.2 million a year for exclusive early access to President Trump’s posts, the product paid off: The president announced the cancellation of massive strikes on Iran — and oil prices fell nearly 5% when markets reopened.

Trump’s clients stood to make small fortunes off the heads-up. Trump himself will reap a financial whirlwind off his insider trading scheme.

To Trump, the power of the American presidency (in this case, the ability to move markets with public pronouncements) is a personal revenue source.

Trump Media is a publicly traded company, Axios reports, with Trump as its main shareholder. He is the sole beneficiary of a trust that owns 41.5% of the company. Donald Trump Jr., the trust’s sole trustee, controls the shares. Those shares have risen 7% since the new product announcement, adding nearly $77 million to the value of Trump’s stake.

Trump is unequaled among American presidents in corrupt self-dealing. He made more than $2.2 billion in 2025 from his family crypto empire, legal settlements, and various licensing deals.

All of this should be impeachable, if not illegal. If left unaddressed, Trump’s self-dealing will become a durable feature of the American presidency.

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FOR THE BEST understanding of where restless voters are driving American politics in the next several cycles, pay close attention to the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan on Tuesday. While general elections in November will determine control of the House and Senate for the next few years, Tuesday’s primary is a better microcosm of the most convulsive era in politics in generations.

Rep. Haley Stevens versus Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is more than a tough race in Michigan. It’s a competition between the establishment wing of an ossified party and insurgent outsiders who believe their team has grown too soft, too moderate, and too accommodating toward the opposing party. These disruptors don’t forgive compromise or dissent. They embrace labels and push policies that would have seemed unfathomable just a few years ago. Does any of this sound familiar?

Even if you, like me, consider MAGA and President Trump to be malignant cancers on the body politic, you can’t ignore the fact that a growing swell of American voters is rightfully disgusted with how both parties are leveraging their monopolies — and this rise of insurgents on the far right and left may soon lead to a radical realignment of U.S. politics.

Here are the forces at play in Michigan that reflect broader national trends:

Status Quo versus Change: Stevens, a four-term congresswoman from a swing district outside Detroit, is the favorite of the Democratic establishment in Michigan and Washington. El-Sayed, a former Rhodes Scholar and public health official with no governing experience, is the political outsider promising to be a change agent. If there is one constant about 21st century politics it’s that voters across the spectrum hate The Establishment and crave change.

Moderate versus Liberal: Stevens is a moderate by nature and politics, a go-along, get-along lawmaker who brags about her ability to work with Republicans to get important things done. El-Sayed is an uncompromising populist progressive, promising to drive corporate money out of politics and provide every American free health care through Medicare.

Israel versus Palestine: Stevens is a mainstream pro-Israel Democrat who supports military aid for Jerusalem. Her campaign is fueled by about $30 million from pro-Israel donors. El-Sayed opposes unconditional U.S. military aid to Israel and calls the military operations in Gaza a genocide.

Christian versus Muslim: Stevens is a Christian. El-Sayed is a Muslim, and of all the voters who might oppose him, these are the two most toxic: People who hate Muslims and Democrats who say they’re not Islamophobic but won’t vote for El-Sayed because they fear his religion makes him unelectable.

Women versus Men: Stevens is just one of 128 women in the U.S. House, where more than 70% of the lawmakers are male. She wants to join the Senate, where just 16 women serve in the 100-member body. While the gender dynamic doesn’t seem to be a major theme of the Michigan campaign, America’s lingering paternalism is worth noting here.

Grit versus Charisma: Stevens did something extraordinary when El-Sayed supporters started mocking the congresswoman for her deep Michigan accent and generally awkward persona: She embraced the criticism with a self-effacing response that suggested the attacks were not aimed at her, but at all Michiganders. “A little bit of stick it to 'em” is her stab at gritty populism. As for El-Sayed, he’s one of the most talented political athletes in American politics, a politician who changes the chemistry in rooms and is as comfortable courting tiny audiences of moderates in northern Michigan public libraries as he is speaking to large audiences of liberal activists in ballrooms. I’ve seen him in both places. His retail politics skills remind me of the first politician I covered: Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas. If he wins Tuesday and again in November, El-Sayed will ride the rapacious winds of political celebrity and instantly become a Democratic star, even a potential presidential candidate.

Tuesday’s primary may not even decide who represents Michigan in the Senate; the Republicans nominee, Mike Rogers, is a formidable candidate. And it certainly isn’t going to settle some of the greatest issues of our day — radical populism, foreign adventurism, racism, sexism, and the celebritization of American politics.

But it will give us a bead on where we’re headed far beyond November.

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Like an oozing syphilitic rash, the White House Correspondents Association Dinner is back.

Tomorrow, dozens of White House reporters will join their corporate bosses and Washington’s dysfunctional elite to celebrate award-winning journalism, distribute a few college scholarships, and give lip service to the First Amendment. Sitting at the head table as a guest of dishonor honor will be the president of the United States, a man who detests, demonizes, and marginalizes independent journalists and, by extension, Americans’ right to free speech.

There is no excuse for this. The scholarship checks could be mailed and the journalism awards could be posted online without giving President Trump a free meal and a free pass for his war on journalism. This is what I wrote in April, before the dinner was brought to a horrifying end when shots were fired after an armed man breached security:

WTF, folks?

This man mocks you, sues you, and targets you for prosecution. He calls the truths you’ve dedicated your lives to reporting “fake news” and orders devastating budget cuts to your colleagues at NPR, PBS, and Voice of America.

In the last year, he banned the AP from the Oval Office and took over the rotating press pool. His Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth imposed draconian restrictions that drove dozens of news outlets out of the Pentagon. His FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr threatens broadcasters with their licenses for covering the administration truthfully. His Justice Department pursued charges against two reporters covering an ICE protest, and searched the home of a Washington Post reporter in hopes of punishing public servants who spoke to her about public service. He called one of your colleagues “ugly,” another “piggy,” and routinely ducks your questions by attacking your news outlets and industry.

And you’re having dinner with this man?

Since then, Trump has intensified his assault, subpoenaing New York Times journalists and Times phone records and opening an unprecedented early license renewal review of ABC’s eight owned-and-operated stations.

More than 500 veteran journalists and eight press organizations are urging the White House Correspondents’ Association to use the dinner to “speak forcefully” in defense of a free press. While I share their complaint, I don’t think it’s enough to confront Trump over plates of prime chateaubriand and Maine lobster (the actual menu in April), knowing that a confrontation is exactly what Trump wants. It feeds his addiction to attention, adds to his manic mélange of grievances, and projects faux courage his base of media-loathing MAGA voters.

Journalists should “speak forcefully” in every story they write or broadcast. But as for tomorrow’s dinner, they should speak with their absence. Boycott the damn dinner.

These newsletters are free but also infrequent. If you want to hear from me daily, sign up for the “Morning Read-In,” where I curate the most compelling stories on politics, culture, communications, and life — with micro-essays of insight via the Subscriber-only chat feature.

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I’m back from a glorious family vacation with a question: Will President Trump get paid to make Saudi Arabia a nuclear state? The question presumes some facts not in evidence, but only a fool would fail to ask.

Here’s what we know:

• Trump has approved a deal to provide Saudi Arabia with a civilian nuclear program and potentially open the door for the kingdom to become a nuclear state — a major concession to an authoritarian regime linked to terrorism, the brutal assassination of an American journalist, and Trump’s financial self-dealing.

• The 30-year deal is estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars, The Wall Street Journal reports, giving American companies a central role in developing Saudi Arabia’s nuclear infrastructure while shutting out foreign competitors.

• It is not known whether Trump and his family would benefit financially from the agreement, but it’s fair to suspect he’ll find a way.

• The Trumps have struck at least nine deals with Saudi investors, pushing millions into the president’s golf properties, tens of millions into his licensing business, and billions into private-equity funds, according to Forbes calculations. In 2024 alone, Trump and his extended family collected an estimated $50 million from deals connected to Saudi Arabia.

  

• Despite bipartisan misgivings, the nuclear deal will almost certainly clear Congress because Trump has the votes to sustain a veto.

• The deal could help revitalize the U.S. nuclear industry while denying Russia and China access to a Saudi nuclear program. But without constraints on the uranium enrichment facility to be built by American companies, nuclear proliferation could explode throughout the Middle East and beyond.

• There are plenty of reasons not to trust the Saudis — and not to trust Trump to curb the Saudis.

• While the kingdom claims its intentions are peaceful, bin Salman said in 2018 that if Iran develops a nuclear weapon, he would too. So far, Iran has the strategic upper hand on Trump in his unauthorized and unpopular war to stop Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.

• The Saudi government has been criticized for its intervention in the Yemeni civil war, restrictions on political and civil liberties, and poor human rights record.

• The kingdom also has been accused of sponsoring Islamic terrorism. In September 2016, Congress passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act that allowed relatives of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to sue Saudi Arabia for its government’s alleged role in the 9/11 strikes.

• In 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident journalist working for the Washington Post, was killed by agents of the Saudi government at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Khashoggi was ambushed and strangled by a 15-member squad of Saudi operatives, his body dismembered and dumped.

• The CIA concluded that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the murder.

• Trump defended bin Salman.

I can’t say for certain the president is guilty of selling out the United States for Saudi money. But only a fool would take this deal at face value.

WHAT YOU’RE MISSING: Today’s newsletter is inspired by an item in today’s “Morning Read-In.” If you’re not a paid subscriber, you also missed these stories:

• How Democrats are aiding Trump’s attack on the U.S. election system.

• How Trump is dismissing U.S. war deaths.

• How Iran, with its claws already in the Strait of Hormuz, is now seeking to close the the oil-flowing channel between the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.

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THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION plans to send election monitors to six states during the 2026 primary season, including three cities here in Michigan. That’s OK: The Department of Justice routinely dispatches monitors to state-run elections as part of its brief to protect the democratic process.

What’s not OK — what is downright chilling — are the DOJ’s letters to local election officials in those six states claiming without evidence that there were irregularities in their 2024 elections and threatening them with criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting.

In the letter to Detroit officials, a Trump aide asked for information about training, staffing and resources, according to the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News. He claimed Justice Department monitors in November 2024 found a lack of provisional ballots in at least one polling location as well as “confusion” over when provisional ballots should be given to voters and problems with accessible voting terminals for voters with physical challenges. He claimed these issues “may have contributed to long lines and lengthy waiting periods at some voting locations.”

Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey wrote back, calling the claims demonstrably false: Provisional ballots are no different than any other ballots, Winfrey said, and there were no shortages of them. She said there was no confusion or long waits. “Simply put,” her letter states, “there were no lines.”

I follow politics and local election protocols closely here in Michigan. I can say with certainty that no elections were stolen in this state and election fraud is an exaggerated issue, a false crisis.

In a video posted to social media, DOJ’s Civil Rights Division chief Harmeet Dhillon said monitors will be sent to 15 jurisdictions in Arizona, Michigan, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Virginia.

Dhillon framed the effort as routine election monitoring, saying DOJ sent monitors to nine jurisdictions during the 2022 primaries and 27 jurisdictions during the 2024 election. But, as Democracy Docket reports, this times things are different. The announcement is part of the DOJ’s campaign to intimidate state election officials.

Earlier Tuesday, DOJ sent letters to all 50 states and D.C. warning that election officials could face criminal liability if they knowingly retain noncitizens on voter rolls or allow them to receive and cast ballots.

The department has also lost 11 district court cases and its first appeal in its effort to force states to hand over unredacted statewide voter rolls. No court has ordered a state to provide that sensitive data.

Dhillon criticized leaders in Michigan, saying the state’s attorney general and governor “don’t like the fact that we’re doing this.” That is true: Gretchen Whitmer and Dana Nessel know Trump is up to no good.

Dhillon also suggested the program will grow. “Stay tuned as we get towards the general election where there’ll be an even more expanded program for vote monitors,” Dhillon said.

Given the president’s history of discrediting and delegitimizing any election outcome that favors Democrats, I consider Dhillon’s “stay tuned” a threat. There is every reason to fear that DOJ election monitors will be leveraged to overturn Democratic victories.

It will take every democratic-loving voter, judge, lawyer, political activist, and election official in both parties to stop Trump.

WHAT YOU’RE MISSING: Today’s newsletter is inspired by an item in today’s “Morning Read-In.” If you’re not a paid subscriber, you also missed these stories:

• The Iran war escalated overnight.

• Why does the media keep pretending there’s a ceasefire?

• Costco is proving that paying well pays off.

• Platner punts, Democrats pay.

  

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IF HE HAD any sense of self-awareness — or any sense at all — President Trump would realize he’s been played by the Iranians.

His unpopular and unauthorized war spun out of control today with the U.S. president calling the Tehran regime “scum” and declaring his bogus cease-fire “over” amid a sharp escalation of strikes and counterstrikes.

Iran’s armed forces attacked U.S. military sites in Bahrain and Kuwait. The United States had earlier carried out airstrikes against several targets in Iran and reimposed sanctions on Iranian oil sales.

The price of oil spiked.

Also, in two new signs that Trump’s miscalculations have emboldened Iran, The Wall Street Journal reports:

• The Iranian regime still has access to more than half of the missiles and launchers it had before the conflict.

• There has been no substantive progress made yet by the U.S. and Iranian teams on a final nuclear agreement.

Maybe it’s beginning to dawn on Trump that Iran is playing chess to his checkers.

Addressing reporters at the NATO summit in Turkey, Trump whined: “We make a deal, and everyone’s agreed. No nuclear weapons. We make a deal. They go outside, talk to the press, they say we never even talked about it. There’s something wrong with them. They’re cuckoo. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over.”

“I don't want to deal with them anymore, they're scum,” he ranted. “They're sick people, they're led by sick people.”

The tit-for-tat came amid the prolonged funeral for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed at the beginning of the war and replaced by younger, more radical, and lethal leadership.

YOU’RE MISSING OUT: Today’s newsletter is inspired by an item in today’s “Morning Read-In.” If you’re not a paid subscriber, you also missed these insights:

• Trump’s anti-immigration team is feeding Iran confidential information about Iranians seeking asylum in the United States.

• Trump is holding state anti-terrorism funding hostage in his bid to control the U.S. election process.

• Trump’s Department of Justice opens a new front in its attempt to intimidate state election officials.

• Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner faces a new rape allegation.

• The Atlantic asks why Democrats allowed Platner to get this far. There is no good answer.

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THIS IS the problem with most voters today, especially partisans: We refuse to see what we don’t want to see or hear what we don’t want to hear.

Progressive voters and Democratic political consultants rationalized the Nazi tattoo, dismissed the sexist posts, ignored the sexting tsunami, and attacked anybody who threatened Graham Platner’s Democratic nomination for a Senate seat in Maine.

Now, less than a month after his nomination, Platner stands credibly accused of rape, and his defenders are finally, belatedly, withdrawing their support.

Politico reported Monday that a romantic partner, Jenny Racicot, said Platner showed up at her house drunk and uninvited one night in 2021, let himself in, and forced himself on her. Platner denied the accusation but said he was evaluating his campaign.

Under Maine law, Platner has to drop out by next Monday for Democrats to replace him on the November ballot.

He’s toast — and perhaps so are Democrats’ prospects for defeating Republican Sen. Susan Collins — because Maine Democrats refused to acknowledge the obvious: Platner never was a worthy candidate.

This was as predictable as it was avoidable — for anybody willing to see it coming.

But we live in a time of democratized and personalized communications, armed with digital technologies that allow us to choose what facts to ignore and what lies to embrace. These tools play to our worst instincts as human beings, as I wrote in one of my first posts at Convulsions 18 months ago:

You and everybody you know – in fact, every human on earth – is instinctually wired to lie and to be lied to. From the moment the serpent deceived Eve about the apple, and Eve deceived Adam, two competing truths marked the DNA of humankind: We are liars. We are dupes.

This paradox informed the evolution of the human species. Small tribes living in caves, large herds of primitive hunters tracking prey, and later, tens of thousands of citizens packed into primordial cities all were led by people, mostly men, who practiced what I call “liarship” – wielding power through lies and with the blind fealty of their followers.

The internet and social media have brought us back to that future. In “We, The Lemmings,” I argue that while President Trump is our liar-in-chief, he’s not our only fabulist.

President Biden’s refusal to acknowledge his declining mental acuity — or even address the public’s alarm — is a classic case of confirmation bias. Democratic leaders and members of the media who ignored what millions of American voters could plainly see may not be organizers of a mass conspiracy/coverup (as Republicans like to believe) but rather the weak-kneed victims of social conformity.

This virulent marriage between lemmings and liars has no bounds. Police lie about shooting Black men. Priests lie about pedophilia. Corporate CEOs lie about racial and gender salary inequity. Athletes lie about performance-enhancing drugs. Insurance agents lie about coverage. Pharmaceutical executives lie about drug trials. Doctors lie about patient outcomes. Neighbors lie to neighbors. Husbands lie to wives and wives lie to husbands. Modern communications enable their mendacity.

Scientists have long documented our inability to discriminate reliably between honesty and dishonesty, and psychologists are just now coming to grips with how technology is hyper-charging humanity’s worst instincts. Algorithms have no soul, no conscience; they’re cold calculations that trigger the sociopathy buried within us all.

After a few centuries of post-Enlightenment progress, a technological revolution in the first two decades of the millennium allowed humanity to revert to form. The internet and its assorted social applications delivered unprecedented power to almost every living person on earth. Like a communion wafer at Sunday services, this gift was placed in the palms of our hands via mobile phones, and we’re using it to crucify reputations, institutions, and the truth.

Bromides won’t save us. The question isn’t – How do we teach people to know fact from fiction? The better question is this: How do we make people want to know the difference – to even care that they’re genetically addicted to bullshit? And if we can’t make people voluntarily honor the truth, how do we create a new norm structure that forces a society to adhere to a common set of facts?

Even as the Platner episode shines a harsh light on left-wing lemmings, the question remains unanswered.

HELP A GUY OUT: Today’s newsletter is inspired by an item in today’s “Morning Read-In.” If you’re not a paid subscriber, you also missed these insights:

• Iran reasserts its control over the Strait of Hormuz.

• Rahm Emanuel extends his lead in the policy primary.

• The Trump curse tanks the United States soccer team.

• A compelling essay on wealth inequality connects America’s first millionaire, billionaire, and trillionaire.

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Loyal “Morning Read-In” contributor credited me with a “nice hat trick of Trump truisms” in today’s MRI for paid Convulsions subscribers:

• “He’s by far the sleaziest self-dealer.”

• “He’s wrong.”

• “Trump is not a complicated man.”

Calling them “three evergreen shots, solidly in the net,” Alan inspired me to share them with you.

Story #1

THE EXTENT of President Trump’s corruption and conflicts of interest is as grotesque as it is gargantuan — and we’ve got receipts: His mandatory 2025 financial disclosure reveals the president made a dirty fortune his first year back in office, including about $1.4 billion from his family’s cryptocurrency businesses.

The $2.2 billion windfall compares to a minimum of $622 million his enterprises earned in 2024, before he returned to office.

“It is completely unprecedented,” Megan Gorman told The New York Times. She’s a tax attorney and the author of a recent book, “All the Presidents’ Money,” that studied the history of presidential wealth dating back 250 years.

While he’s not the first sleazy, self-dealing U.S. president, he’s by far the sleaziest self-dealer.

His haul included:

• As much as $200 million from an investment firm tied to the United Arab Emirates that bought nearly half of the Trump family’s main crypto company, World Liberty Financial, the New York Times reports, “a transaction that blurred the line between foreign policy and private enterprise.” Trump, who in past years called crypto a scam, is now both a major operator and regulator.

• Hundreds of millions of dollars from sales of his $TRUMP memecoin and World Liberty’s sale of its own digital tokens.

• $14 million from licensing the Trump name to properties in countries that are crucial to U.S. foreign policy interests, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Story #2

TRUMP VOWED on Tuesday to defy a 6-3 Supreme Court ruling reaffirming the long-held principle that the Constitution guarantees nearly all children born on U.S. soil are citizens.

In a social media post after the ruling on birthright citizenship, the president called the high court decision “too bad for our country.” He claimed he could “easily make it up in Congress through legislation.”

He’s wrong. Five justices, a majority of the court, ruled that the Constitution guarantees birthright citizenship. A bill can’t change that dynamic and a constitutional amendment won’t happen.

The Trump-friendly court also:

• Lifted limits on how much political parties can spend on advertising and other expenses in coordination with candidates.

• Allowed states to bar the participation of transgender female athletes from girls’ and women’s sports teams.

Story #3

TRUMP IS NOT a complicated man. He speaks his mind. And what takes up the most space in his fuzzy orange orb isn’t the concerns and challenges of the people he was elected to serve. It’s his hobby: his vanity building and restoration projects.

Trump has been mentioning his construction and renovation projects more than ever, a Washington Post analysis found. He invoked his White House ballroom, renovations to the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool, the restoration of Washington’s fountains and other non-governing projects on four out of every five days in June, according to the Post’s review of Trump’s speeches, interviews, social media posts, and other public remarks.

That’s an increase of one-third over January — and eight times as much as last June.

“For the past three months,” write three Post reporters, “Trump has talked about his construction projects at a greater frequency than topics such as health care and wages, and about as often as he has talked about inflation and prices.”

He doesn’t care about you.

FIGHT FOMO: These stories first appeared in today’s “Morning Read-In.” If you’re not a paid subscriber, you also missed these insights:

• Extreme retribution has come for Democratic leaders.

• Why is today “Bobby Bonilla Day”?

• Futurists’ view on the next 50 years of American history.

• The divide among Iranian leaders on how to take advantage of Trump.

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More MRIs, Please!

What do you think of my lede? You may not find another like it tonight because the media seems allergic to clearly writing these two facts:

• Trump is trying to reclaim lost ground.

• The U.S. and Iran are still at war. There is no peace deal or ceasefire.

First, the Strait is a battleground because of Trump’s war. Before the conflict he initiated with Israel, oil traffic flowed and Tehran couldn’t dream of holding the global economy hostage. While you can find this context deep inside some stories, you’ll rarely find it framed in a story’s first paragraph, or lede.

Second, there is no ceasefire. Not when Iran is hitting the U.S. with drones and the U.S. is hitting back. As my former Associated Press colleague wrote Monday on her Substack, words matter. She criticized the media for parroting the claim that there had been a “deconfliction” in the war.

“Words have meaning and the increasing readiness to use words and terms without explanation, or without calling out distortions makes us all less informed,” the retired foreign correspondent wrote. “It also distorts our understanding of events, of progress or failure.” Then Gannon critiqued the media’s coverage of the memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Iran and the United States.

This MoU itself has often been defined by misleading, vague or confusing terminology. In the initial stages it was referred to as a peace agreement by mediators, who announced the MoU and repeated in news reports. It is not. It is not even an agreement.

It is simply a 60-day pause in fighting, while the thorny issues that have, until now, prevented a peace agreement are discussed with the hopes that it will eventually lead to a peace agreement.

As the pause and negotiations begin, it seems a new wave of confusing, self-serving terminology is being used to obscure what work is being done, who is doing it, and whether real progress is occurring.

Nearly a week later, after several rounds of military attacks, the media still pretends there’s a peace agreement or ceasefire. Reporting on today’s attacks:

• The AP says an “uneasy ceasefire” is shaken.

• The New York Times says a “truce” faces testing.

• The Washington Post says a “ceasefire” is threatened.

Why are they propagating government lies?

THIS NEWSLETTER is for and about you — witnesses to an age of acrimony and anxiety. It’s free: Subscribe for more. Or level up to a paid subscription for the daily “Morning Read-In,” where I curate the most compelling stories on politics, culture, communications, and life — with micro-essays of insight via the Subscriber-only chat feature.

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IN THE RUNUP to the most significant election of 2025, President Trump cast New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani as an existential threat, a far-left “communist.” Mamdani called Trump a “despot.”

But as soon as Mamdani won, the two men staged a lovefest in the Oval Office. “I think this mayor can do some things that are going to be really great,” Trump gushed. Replied the 34-year-old Democratic socialist: “We … focused not on places of disagreement, which there are many, and also focused on the shared purpose that we have in serving New Yorkers.”

It was a jarring motif. Unless you saw the meeting for what it was — a brief union between the far right and left of American politics represented by two men who, while differing completely in style and substance, share this important quality: Trump and Mamdani are ascendant and disruptive forces overtaking the stale status quo. They represent a growing number of voters driven to political extremes out of disgust with the two major parties.

Seven months later, Mamdani and his allies swept a series of congressional primaries in New York in a seismic victory Tuesday for the insurgent left and a blow to the Democratic establishment.

“The results also shook the foundations of the Democratic Party far beyond the five boroughs,” The New York Times reports.

When they are certified, Mr. Mamdani, 34, and his movement will be on track to double the number of socialists in Congress from two to four. The outcome will also force a Democratic Party, already searching for its identity, to reckon with its ascendant, unapologetic left.

Politico reports that democratic socialists are already gearing up for 2028.

Fresh off sweeping victories across New York City that showcased the growing power of the anti-establishment progressive left inside the Democratic Party, Democratic Socialists of America leaders, eager to capitalize on their momentum, are already plotting their next act: making sure one of their own is on the presidential primary debate stage, whether the party wants them or not.

Of course, the GOP reckoned with — and ultimately surrendered to — its unapologetic right and the result is a twice-elected president Trump.

In his latest column, Bret Stephens of the New York Times reminds his readers that, whether they want to admit it or not, Trump is a reflection of the entire political system.

However much we may disdain him, the president has the rest of us on the hook, as the face and voice of a country that ought to know better. Trump’s angry visage draped between the exterior columns of the Department of Justice? That’s us. His gilded, meretricious redecoration of the White House? That’s us. His repeatedly avowed admiration for Vladimir Putin? That’s us. His laughable claim about having achieved regime change in Tehran? That’s us. His Mafia-like threats against NATO allies? That’s us. His indescribably vain (and pathetically fruitless) effort to affix his name to the Kennedy Center? That’s us. His venal family profiting off his presidency in ways both transparent and tacky? That’s us.

The pushback is predictable: “I am not Trump! I didn’t vote for him. Blame MAGA!” But here’s the inconvenient truth: We are all responsible for not demanding better of our leaders; for not reforming our political system when our party controlled Congress; for not holding our team accountable; and for not persuading our friends, family, and neighbors to make better choices. We can blame the evil “other side” and surrender to nihilism or look inward and become a partner in positive disruption.

This is part of what I call America’s “We, the people” problem. The ultimate responsibility for sustaining and improving a democracy lies within each of us.

As Stephens put it: “Let’s not look away from the parts we played in bringing America to this moment. Let’s remember who we once were, because it’s what we may yet be again — if only we feel the sting of our present shame.”

This newsletter was drawn from two items posted in today’s “Morning Read-In” (MRI). If you’re not a paid subscriber, you’re not getting your daily MRI — and today you also missed stories on:

• A rare act of bipartisan action in Congress

• A rare act of GOP defiance of Trump

• Trump’s latest lie about the Reflection Pool

• Trump’s latest attempt to shield himself from IRS audits.

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This newsletter is for and about you — witnesses to an age of acrimony and anxiety. It’s free: Subscribe for more. Or level up to a paid subscription for the daily “Morning Read-In,” where I curate the most compelling stories on politics, culture, communications, and life — with micro-essays of insight via the Subscriber-only chat feature.

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It’s a horrible deal. President Trump ended his wrongheaded war, for now, with a preliminary agreement that rewards Iran $300 billion for reconstruction, allows Tehran to keep its conventional missile system, curbs Israel’s fight against Iranian proxies, and punts on the issue he said led us to war: Iran’s nuclear program. In exchange, the Iranians re-open the Strait of Hormuz, the critical oil byway they didn’t control before the war.

While claiming victory, the president blamed his capitulation on the damage his conflict inflicted on the U.S. economy.

Referring to the U.S. leader who oversaw the start of the Great Depression, Trump said, “The one president I did not want to be was the late great Herbert Hoover.”

He should have thought of that before starting the war.

Under the deal:

• Oman and Iran — apparently without the United States — will hold talks over its administration of the Strait.

• The U.S. will lift its blockade of Iranian ports.

• Both nations agreed to push talks about Iran’s nuclear program into a 60-day negotiation period that could be extended by “mutual consent.”

• Iran gets to keep its conventional missiles, Trump said, adding oddly that it’s only fair, because Saudi Arabia is allowed to have them.

• The United States joined Iran in calling for an end to operations in Lebanon, where Israel has been waging a campaign against Hezbollah. Israel has said it is not a party to the deal. Trump even admonished Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his aggression against the militant group.

• The United States will work with regional partners to “develop a definitive, mutually agreed plan with at least” $300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of Iran. Trump denied reports that the deal included American funds.

• But the cash will come from somewhere — likely Gulf states at Trump’s request — and could provide Iran with much more money than the accord President Obama negotiated more than a decade ago.

• Trump nullified the Obama deal after falsely attacking it for years. On Wednesday, he bleated, “You know what the Iranians did? They laughed at Obama, and they said, ‘He’s a stupid son of a bitch.’”

Really, Mr. President? Who’s laughing now?

Links:

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/06/17/world/g7-summit-trump-france

https://apnews.com/live/g7-summit-updates-06-17-2026

https://www.wsj.com/world/trump-defends-iran-deal-says-he-wants-to-avoid-economic-catastrophe-cdf41846?mod=mhp

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THE MOST IMPORTANT two sentences of today’s Iran “peace deal” coverage are buried 17 paragraphs deep in a Wall Street Journal story:

A senior administration official said Iran knows the U.S. is unwilling to return to war, raising the possibility that Tehran could close the Strait again for its own diplomatic leverage. Short of getting concrete commitments to limit or end its nuclear work, the official said the emerging agreement is likely to be less restrictive than the 2015 deal brokered by former President Barack Obama.

After attacking Obama’s deal for years and tanking it — and following 15 weeks of an expensive and unpopular war — the truth of those two sentences is galling. These facts likely will not be uttered on Fox News or on “60 Minutes,” and they’ll never be confirmed on record by the jackals who brought us to war.

The page-and-a-half memorandum of understanding will shed more light when it’s released, but not much. It punts the hardest questions:

• What assurances does the United States get that Iran won’t soon become a nuclear power?

• Exactly how many billions of dollars did Tehran win in Trump’s pathetic little war?

NO MATTER WHEN the war with Iran ends, the New York Times reports, the conflict has triggered durable economic changes.

• The global energy order is being reshaped. “This energy shock — the second in just four years — is likely to accelerate a transition to renewables like solar and wind as well as nuclear power,” writes Patricia Cohen in her smart, forward-looking analysis.

• Beijing is the big winner. “China is poised to benefit most from the expected boon in renewables,” she writes.

• The Strait is bowed. “It is unclear whether shipping traffic will ever again be able to move freely through the Strait of Hormuz — the only sea route for moving oil, natural gas and other cargo out of the Persian Gulf,” she writes.

• Slow growth and high prices will dog global economies. “Those budgetary pressures are only going to increase as governments offer assistance to households struggling with higher energy prices and increase military budgets to cope with growing security threats,” Cohen writes.

FIGHTING FOMO: These stories were flagged in today’s “Morning Read-In.” Unless you’re a paid subscriber to Convulsions, you also missed my take on these stories:

• The New York Times investigative team concludes that Jeffrey Epstein almost certainly wasn’t murdered.

• Trump’s prosecutors are investigating Gavin Newsom and his wife.

• Michigan’s Senate race pilots how voters want to address AI.

• Trump knew his ballroom would cost taxpayers millions of dollars when he said, “This is taxpayer-free.”

• Doug Sosnik’s autopsy on the 2024 presidential election and his advice for Democrats in 2028.

Paid subscribers are what keep Convulsions going, which is why I created the daily MRI just for them. Consider joining! I can’t do this without you.

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