THE ATLANTIC – Politics | Politics & Government

The first surprising thing about President Trump’s impending defeat in the 2026 Iran war is that he already fought and won a successful war against Iran last year. In June 2025, U.S. and Israeli airstrikes badly damaged the Iranian nuclear program in 12 days of bombardment. Exactly how badly remains controversial. But they didn’t do nothing. If Trump had quit while ahead, he could have banked his gains from last August as a solid if imperfect win.The second surprising thing about Trump’s impending defeat is that he does not seem to have cared at all about the only evident reason to resume fighting in 2026: the Iranian people’s rebellion against their brutal oppressors. Trump has never given any evidence of caring about Iranian democracy or human rights. He promised the Iranian people “Help is on the way” on January 13, but military operations did not commence until thousands were dead and the rebellion was already effectively crushed. During military operations, Trump made clear that he sought a deal with the existing regime. He made no effort to support or cooperate with Iranian dissidents before, during, or after the uprising.The third surprising thing about Trump’s impending defeat is that even he himself seems never to have understood why he went back to war against Iran. What exactly did he think he would achieve? He kept saying that he wanted to ensure that Iran never developed a nuclear weapon. He also insisted that he had effectively prevented it from doing so in August. He seemed genuinely to believe that claim. If so, why resume the fighting? If, however, those words were wrong, then why not simply hit the nuclear sites again? Why the need for this bigger war?Trump started the February 28 war for reasons of personality, not strategy. He is on his way to losing the war for the same reasons of personality.Trump is arrogant. Think how often Trump mocks his predecessors as “dumb” and praises himself as “smart.” Those predecessors, from Jimmy Carter through Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden, all had to ponder military responses to Iranian terrorism and aggression. They all ultimately decided not to wage a major war against Iranian national territory. Among the prime deterrents to action: the Strait of Hormuz problem. Trump apparently decided that a problem that was too hard for everybody else would magically disappear for him, because he is tough and growls in… [TheTopNews] Read More.

Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi occupy a lonely space in Congress. Their respective parties—Fitzpatrick is a Republican from Pennsylvania, Suozzi a Democrat from New York—are waging a nationwide gerrymandering fight that neither wants any part in. With the seat-for-seat battle expanding to new states seemingly by the day, Fitzpatrick and Suozzi are calling for a truce—if only anyone would listen.“There’s got to be people that come to the table and agree that it’s in the best interest of our nation to not do this, that it’s a race to the bottom,” Fitzpatrick told me.National leaders in both parties, however, are in no mood for peace. President Trump has directed Republicans to seize every opportunity to draw House seats in their favor, in hope that the GOP can create a buffer big enough to overcome the president’s sagging poll numbers in the midterm elections this fall. The Supreme Court’s decision to weaken the Voting Rights Act last month freed Republicans to redistrict even more aggressively across the Deep South, building on the party’s gains in Texas and a handful of other states last fall.Democrats, who hit back in California but lost a court fight in Virginia, have vowed their own escalation in blue states next year. “We’re going to win in November,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries vowed to reporters last week, before adopting a bit of fantasy-flick hyperbole: “And then we’re going to crush their souls as it relates to the extremism that they are trying to unleash on the American people.”The gerrymandering frenzy will likely extend for at least two more years, which in turn will only exacerbate the polarization and partisanship that has gripped Congress and steadily diminished its standing. “We’ve just made this so bad for our country,” Suozzi told me. “We have got to address this problem, or we’re going to fall further into this spiral, this death spiral.”Fitzpatrick and Suozzi are co-chairs of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, a group that in an ideal world might comprise the entirety of Congress—after all, what else is a legislative body for?—but in these dysfunctional times make up a few dozen lawmakers along the center political axis of both parties. With the House so closely divided over the past decade, the caucus has occasionally exerted influence over policy—when it’s been able to avoid its own issues. I spoke with Fitzpatrick and Suozzi in a joint phone interview… [TheTopNews] Read More.

It was something of a political hall of mirrors: Hunter Biden arriving at Candace Owens’s house, sitting in a book-filled room decorated with a crucifix and orchids in the shape of a heart, holding a coffee cup labeled conspiracy theorist, and answering a range of questions from a podcast host who has called him “an alleged sex predator” and “A DEGENERATE THAT SHOULD BE IN PRISON” who comes from a “SCUM family.” The first question: “The cocaine that was found at the White House, was it yours?”To say this was an unusual pairing is an understatement. To claim it was Frost/Nixon is an overstatement. But it said something about modern-day politics—and the weirdness of online culture—that the son of a former Democratic president and a right-wing podcaster were sitting there together, conversing for nearly two hours, finding common ground on being misunderstood, on being targeted by a powerful president, and on questioning the circumstances of Charlie Kirk’s death and whether the assassination attempts against Donald Trump were staged.Owens apologized for treating Biden like “a caricature” and joining the “political machine” that attacked him during one of the lowest moments of his life (“I’m really sorry that I contributed to that. Like, I just feel really shitty”). He lavished her with praise (“You’re probably the most effective communicator I’ve ever heard behind the microphone”). She encouraged him to spend time in confession (“Don’t worry,” he responded, “I’ve been to confession”), and he giddily proposed that they go see Pope Leo XIV together: “For real, let’s go to the Vatican.” Biden offered book recommendations (“Have you ever read The Devil’s Chessboard?”), and Owens complimented his intelligence (“Not to be rude, but I thought you were dumb”).Much of the conversation focused on Biden’s recovery story, human details of which Owens seemed largely unaware. “I just didn’t even consider: He’s a crackhead. That’s actually a very relatable thing,” she said at one point. (Never mind that in December 2024 she devoted a segment to President Biden pardoning his son, in which she mentioned “crack” more than two dozen times over about 20 minutes.) To anyone who has read Hunter Biden’s 2021 memoir, followed his federal court cases, or heard him in previous interviews, there were a lot of familiar themes: The guy who has long had addiction issues, and been in and out of rehab through much of his adult life. The guy who… [TheTopNews] Read More.

President Trump took 11 weeks to choose between Senator John Cornyn and State Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate primary runoff—so long that most people figured he’d never actually decide. Which is why, when Trump finally endorsed Paxton on Tuesday, the news hit a crowd of Republican retirees at a Tex-Mex restaurant like manna from the MAGA heavens.Paxton was due that day for a meet-and-greet at Matt’s Rancho Martinez in Allen, but he was running late. Suddenly, the sound system, which had been vibrating gently with a selection of the Country Top 40, began blasting “Y.M.C.A.” People read Trump’s Truth Social post aloud from their phones and waved their arms in time with the president’s unofficial anthem. A man near me with slicked-back hair shouted into his phone, “We did it!” And by the time the next song came on—Thunderstruck! Ahh-ahh!—waiters were circulating with trays of free margaritas. “I have chills!” one elderly woman told me happily. Another lifted her plastic cup to the sky and shouted over the din, “What a time to be alive!”It really is. Donald Trump is a historically unpopular politician. Gas prices, high inflation, and the war with Iran have all systems flashing fire-engine red for Republicans in November. Yet here was the president, throwing his political weight behind Paxton—a man who has been indicted, impeached, and allegedly unfaithful to his wife. In Washington, D.C., Senate Republicans were apoplectic at the president’s casual betrayal of one of their own. But here at the Rancho, an endorsement from Trump was welcomed like a hug from Oprah or the title of “Sole Survivor,” an American prize of inestimable value. These Texas Republicans love their attorney general the way that they love Trump: wholeheartedly, with no questions asked.By choosing Paxton, the president is rewarding his—and his base’s—unwavering devotion. He is likely also guaranteeing Paxton a primary victory over Cornyn. And in so doing, Trump may have cemented a set of very difficult circumstances for his party. If Paxton wins on Tuesday, Democrats will probably be better positioned to win statewide in Texas than they’ve been in the past 40 years.In the beginning, there was a pen. A $1,000 Montblanc, to be specific, the writing instrument of choice for celebrities, heads of state, and other kinds of people who recognize the cultural cachet of a customizable gold nib. Paxton apparently knows a good pen when he sees… [TheTopNews] Read More.

In a spat between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Marjorie Taylor Greene, which side would American leftists take? Until recently, this might have sounded like a ludicrous question. By any measure, AOC is one of America’s most left-wing politicians. Greene is a self-described Christian nationalist who once belonged to the right-wing Freedom Caucus.But two weeks ago, AOC described Greene as “a proven bigot and anti-Semite” who shouldn’t be trusted, and many American leftists flocked to Greene’s corner, condemning AOC for her comments. They included the activist Cenk Uygur, the journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Grim, the Palestinian writers Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed el-Kurd, and the Democratic strategist Peter Daou, to name a few.The newfound love for Greene on the left is explained primarily by one factor: Israel. MTG has changed sides on the issue. In the past she evinced strong support for “our ally Israel,” criticized AOC on the grounds that the representative “hates Israel,” and complained about “Israel-hating radicals.” Now Greene has broken with Donald Trump and come to condemn the “genocide in Gaza.”Greene hasn’t become more tolerant: She greeted the election of Zohran Mamdani, New York’s first Muslim mayor, last year with an X post that showed the Statue of Liberty in a burka. And she hasn’t abandoned conspiracism: Just last week, with regard to COVID-19, she claimed that the pharmaceutical company Moderna had helped “manipulate the virus (bioweapon), make the vaccine (poison), and then make the profits.”[Yair Rosenberg: Four simple questions for Marjorie Taylor Greene]But Israel tops all concerns for some leftists, so Greene’s reversal on the issue is enough to win their support, and AOC’s refusal to embrace her is seen as a counterproductive purity test. Uygur, for instance, claimed that AOC had done “exactly what Israeli supporters want—split the anti-war movement and critics of Israel’s genocide.”The AOC-MTG dustup is not really about how big a tent the American left should erect, however. It’s not even about whether left-wingers should occasionally collaborate with those on the right. Rather, it presents a choice between two irreconcilable futures for the leftist movement itself.One of these two visions involves building on America’s liberal tradition while attempting to push it toward democratic socialism. This approach has a long history in the United States. In the late 1930s, the Communist Party gave vociferous support to Franklin D. Roosevelt even while recruiting thousands of people to its own ranks. The Port Huron Statement of… [TheTopNews] Read More.