Navigating Iran crisis, Trump relies on experience over star power  —  Gabbard, Hegseth outside the inner circle as president weighs military actions against Iran.  —  Summary55  —  As President-elect Donald Trump assembled his core national security team early this year …

Republicans Threaten a Hospital Apocalypse  —  Experts warn of potentially hundreds of hospital closures, which would degrade the entire medical system. … As we at the Prospect have reported, while the Senate's version of the Republican budget reconciliation bill was widely expected …

U.S. to Review Social Media Posts of Student and Scholar Visa Applicants  —  The State Department is restarting the processing of visa applications from students and visiting scholars, but is screening for “hostility” toward the United States.  —  The State Department plans to review …

Parsing ICE's mixed-up, hard-to-believe assault claims  —  ICE officials keep touting a 413 percent increase in assaults on officers to justify anonymity.  —  Last month, I wrote a column questioning why Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were increasingly disguising their identities as they conducted sweeps and arrests.

The Supreme Court's incoherent new attack on trans rights, explained  —  What the hell did the Court just do to equal protection law? … It was obvious, if you listened to the Supreme Court's oral argument in United States v. Skrmetti last December, that the Court would vote …

Trump delays the TikTok ban once again  —  President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to keep TikTok running in the U.S. for another 90 days to give his administration more time to broker a deal to bring the social media platform under American ownership.

Trump Rambles On And On About ‘Beautiful’ Flagpole In Front Of White House  —  The president claimed, “These are the best poles anywhere in the country, or in the world,” during installation.  —  As war in the Middle East rages, President Donald Trump found time to supervise the installation …

Is Mike Lee Shitposting His Way Out of Congress?  —  The Utah Republican has given Democrats in the state the rarest of opportunities.  They're already charting out how to retire him.  —  Never Tweet  —  WHEN SEN. MIKE LEE (R-Utah) took to social media to spread wild …

How My Reporting on the Columbia Protests Led to My Deportation  —  As an Australian who wrote about the demonstrations while on campus, I gave my phone a superficial clean before flying to the U.S. I underestimated what I was up against.  —  Many people are detained at U.S. airports for reasons they find arbitrary and mysterious.

Musk Savages ‘Snake’ Trump Aide as Their White House Feud Erupts  —  VENOMOUS WORDS  —  Sergio Gor has been blamed in part for the explosive breakdown in the alliance between the president and his former “First Buddy.”  —  Elon Musk publicly ripped into a top White House aide who fueled his falling out with President Donald Trump.

The Subway Is Not Scary  —  In 2014, New York Times reporter Michael Barbaro (who would go on to become one of the paper's superstars as host of its podcast “The Daily") posted this tweet:  —  After receiving a good deal of ridicule, Barbaro deleted the tweet.  The nervous sentiment he expressed, however, lives on.

Knife-Wielding Illegal Alien Charged With Attempted Murder After Allegedly Attacking Trump Attorney in NY  —  A United States Attorney for New York was chased with a knife by an illegal immigrant outside a hotel in Albany, New York, security camera footage shows.

Hegseth Recommended a ‘Passive Approach’ to Honoring Juneteenth  —  Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth requested the Pentagon go light on commemorating Juneteenth, the holiday marking the end of slavery … Juneteenth marks the day in 1865, after the Civil War ended, when Union soldiers arrived …

White British — the two words toxifying politics  —  Serious social issues, perceived and real, will not be fixed by supercharging racial grievance  —  Mainstream political discourse has found two words seeping in: “white British”.  The term is increasingly used to create a narrative of victimhood …

As Trump pledges mass deportation, he's creating more undocumented people  —  More than 1 million people who were granted legal entry to the country under different programs are now being considered illegally here by the Trump administration.  —  Florndjie Camey, 31, had gone from a bleak future …

Bernie Sanders dives into a key House battleground Trump carried in 2024 with a new endorsement  —  Democrat Rebecca Cooke is running against GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden again after she lost by less than 3 points in western Wisconsin even as Trump won the district by 7 last year.

Naming Villains and Values  —  If you tell people they face an existential threat but don't act as if the threat is real, how can you expect to get people to help you fight it?  That's the question Democrats need to ask themselves on a number of fronts this week, as I discussed on Substack Live …

June 18, 2025 (Wednesday)  —  Tomorrow is the federal holiday honoring Juneteenth, the celebration of the announcement in Texas on June 19th, 1865, that enslaved Americans were free.  —  That announcement came as late as it did because, while General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army …

Justice Dept. to Cut Two-Thirds of Inspectors Monitoring Gun Sales  —  The move is part of the Trump administration's effort to defang and downsize the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.  —  The Justice Department plans to slash the number of inspectors …

Appeals court says DOJ cannot represent Trump in appeal of E. Jean Carroll case  —  A jury last year ordered Trump to pay the columnist $83 million in damages.  —  President Donald Trump speaks to the press in the Oval Office of the White House as members of Italian soccer club Juventus pay a visit in Washington, June 18, 2025.