Things will fall apart. Right now lots of things appear to be falling apart. Trump’s partnership or whatever it was with Netanyahu is gone, for example. And now Netanyahu faces a possible re-election defeat in October. I’m not sure how a Netanyahu defeat will play out in Israel, but if it weakens the right-wing coalition that has dominated Israel for the last 30 years or so, that would be a good thing.

I keep reading that the MAGA coalition is fracturing. There have been “MAGA is fracturing” stories going back to March and April. The war with Iran accelerated the fracturing. Initially people who had believed Trump when he promised no new wars felt betrayed. Now the rest of  the coalition feels betrayed. The $300 billion for Iranian reconstruction seems to have particularly put a lot of them off.  Republicans aren’t too happy with it, either.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), echoed the sentiment, telling reporters: “History teaches that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is not a good idea. I think the president is receiving some very poor advice on this deal.”

He’s not getting advice, Ted. Trump only listens to his own gut.

And then there’s this.

Ben Shapiro, the right-wing commentator who has been a loyal soldier to Trump’s Middle Eastern military incursions, was not so measured. The Daily Wire founder had a full-blown conniption over the memorandum of understanding. Shapiro cast most of the blame on Vice President J.D. Vance, and zeroed in on reports that Israel had not been a party to the negotiations, that the U.S. and its Gulf allies would establish a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran, and that the deal will allow Iran to continue to exert financial control over the Strait of Hormuz. 

I’m not sure that the Gulf Allies are going to be putting money into Iran reconstruction. The text of the agreement says:

The United States of America undertakes with regional partners to develop a definitive, mutually agreed plan with at least USD 300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The mechanism for the implementation of this plan will be finalized as part of a final deal within 60 days. All required licenses, waivers and permissions needed for the relevant financial transactions will be granted by the United States of America.

The Gulf States were not party to the agreement, and I suspect they will tell Trump to pay it himself. we’ll see. In fact, I’m wondering if the Gulf States are going to be quite so friendly to Trump going forward. They must see he’s a lame duck who can’t be trusted. But so far Mohammed bin Salman is sticking with him, as far as I can tell.

Speaking of other things falling apart, here’s a headline from the New York Times:

Who couldn’t have seen that coming? Hegseth, apparently. RFK the Lesser hasn’t weighed in yet. The outbreak is at  Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. Since I’m almost out of New York Times gift links, here’s the story from ABC News:

The basic training facility for the Air Force in San Antonio, Texas, is experiencing a flu outbreak following the end of mandatory vaccination for all service members.

As of Wednesday, there are at least 159 known cases among recruits and two hospitalizations at Joint Base San Antonio, two sources familiar with the matter told ABC News. One source told ABC News the number of cases and hospitalizations may be higher.

The outbreak comes after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in April that the annual flu vaccine would be optional for all U.S. military personnel, both active and reserve.  

The Senate shows signs of a falling out with Hegseth. This is from TPM:

The Senate has tucked a provision into the must-pass annual defense bill that would drastically cut Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s personal travel budget unless the Pentagon coughs up more information on the lawless campaign of high seas boat strikes.

The bill, which passed the GOP-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee last week, is trying to force the disclosure of the unedited footage of every boat strike in the campaign. It also wants more information on the Pentagon’s investigation into the apparent U.S. missile strike on a girls school in the opening days of the Iran war.

If the Pentagon fails to provide the information, Hegseth’s travel budget would be cut by 75%. The Senate tried a similar but less draconian move late last year, which the new provision suggests didn’t succeed in obtaining the requested information.

You might remember that last year all 45 Democrats and both Independents voted against confirming Hegseth as SecDef, along with three Republicans: Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell, and Lisa Murkowski. (I think McConnell has been out of f***s for a while.) This resulted in a 50-50 tie, which was broken by the Veep. Some of those Republicans who voted to confirm Hegseth must be sorry by now.

I’m hearing the Senate is tired of being blindsided by Trump. You must have heard the story that the Senate was determined to confirm Trump’s new nominee for Director of National Intelligence, a fellow named Jay Clayton. This had to be done by Friday in order to prevent Trump’s other pick, a walking dumpster fire named Bill Pulte, from becoming the acting director. Clayton isn’t qualified, either, but having Pulte as DNI is a step below putting the Reflecting Pool algae in the job.  But Trump refused to allow the confirmation to go forward. He wants Pulte to help him screw up the midterm elections. So now we’re stuck with Pulte for a few months. And I understand even a lot of Senate Republicans are pissed at Trump.

And this takes us to The Apotheosis of Donald Trump by Peter Wehner at The Atlantic. In his second term, Wehner writes, “Trump, left on his own without adult supervision, has lurched from blunder to catastrophe.”

As a result, Trump’s approval ratings have cratered. Consumer confidence has fallen to historic lows. Public sentiment is in “complete collapse” on key issues. The mood of ordinary Americans has soured, with many more dissatisfied than satisfied. For the first time, we’re seeing signs that Republicans in Congress may resist the will of the president. And Trump’s MAGA coalition, which until now has been cultlike in its loyalty, is fracturing and turning on itself. 

And then there’s Trump’s advancing age. The signs of his deteriorating health, both physical and mental, are unmistakable. There is nowhere left for Trump to go except into further decline. The question left to us is how long he will be allowed to lurch into more catastrophes? I seriously question if he’s gong to last until 2028. If Congress doesn’t reel him in, his own failing health might.

Things do fall apart.

I hear Trump is so eager to get the oil flowing again he’s telling shippers it’s okay to use the Strait of Hormuz now. The shippers are waiting to hear that from Iran. And there are still questions about mines. The economy is not expected to bounce back quickly, since a lot of oil producers shut down operations after the Strait was closed. It will take some time to get production up and running again, I understand. See also Three reasons ships are not going through the Strait of Hormuz yet at the BBC. Among other things, we’re reminded that there are a lot of ships that have been stuck in the Gulf for some time, and the first thing they’re going to do is just get outta there.

I seriously wish I had a subscription to the Financial Times. There’s a headline saying “This time, Trump and Netanyahu have really fallen out.” Sounds juicy. If any good comes from this mess, damaging Netanyahu could be it.

Now back to domestic concerns. I haven’t commented on Trump’s vulgar birthday UFC cage match party. Paul Krugman has commented, and this is worth reading. However, I also read last week that Trump believed the cage match extravaganza would impress his base, and I don’t know if that’s true. Trump’s perpetual self-indulgences on the public dime may not be playing all that well in Trump Country, considering that Trump Country is getting slammed by Trump’s Economy pretty bleeping hard.

And today we learned — well, we already pretty much knew, I think — that the Marie Antoinette Memorial Airplane Hangar, aka the “ballroom,” has already cost taxpayers a bunch of money. The Washington Post got hold of the contractor’s estimate.

But a detailed project summary prepared for the White House by the contractor more than three weeks before Trump’s comments estimated the total construction cost at $600 million — with more than half coming from taxpayers, according to a copy of the contractor estimate obtained by The Washington Post.

By the time Trump made his comments in March, the federal government had already approved more than a dozen payments to the contractor overseeing the work, Clark Construction, totaling tens of millions of dollars in public funds, according to a log of the contractor’s invoices obtained by The Post.

And then later it says,

Multiple project summaries provided to the White House by Clark Construction show that internal cost estimates have been significantly higher than administration officials have acknowledged in public comments or court filings. They also show that the work was projected to rely heavily on taxpayer dollars from the moment it was announced.

So, Trump wasn’t just mistaken. He was lying all along.

Under the heading of Our Fascist Future, see A Facebook Post Is Enough for the DOJ to Say You’re “Antifa” by Malcolm Ferguson at The New Republic. The Department of Justice indicted 15 people involved with Direct Action Minnesota for being violent Antifa members. I’m serious.

These are people who are using non-electoral tactics—many of which are legal, like observing—after watching federal agents kidnap immigrants and shoot their neighbors dead in the street. The administration even pointed to a Facebook post in which defendant Cameron Kennedy stated that they needed to become “ungovernable” as a flimsy example of antifa activity. And even with all that, it’s worth mentioning for the umpteenth time that antifa is not a cohesive, established group that exists. There is no leader, no headquarters, no yearly conference. 

There’s no evidence any of the accused caused any injury to an ICE agent. According to The Guardian, “The indictment does not allege officers were injured, though it mentions kicking a federal vehicle and knocking notes from an agent’s hands.” There’s lots of evidence ICE agents harmed a lot of people and killed a couple of them for no reason. But given the DoJ’s recent track record, there’s reason to hope none of thse people will be convicted.

I’ve been looking for more information on exactly what the “peace deal” actually provides. There’s not much. Trump is making a lot of claims that I suspect are not accurate. Iran is making a lot of claims that Trump may not know about.

The best thing to read about this alleged deal is Tom Nichols’s Trump Celebrates While America Capitulates at The Atlantic. Here’s a bit:

The details of the agreement remain unconfirmed, but the president, of course, is eager to spin the outcome as a victory. (Trump was in a hurry to sign the deal on his birthday; the Iranians, who now seem to be in charge of this whole business, instead said they will send someone to a meeting in Switzerland on Friday.) But even before we have the details, it is clear that Trump has failed to achieve every one of the goals he put forward for this war of choice, and now he is determined to sign, seal, and deliver America’s capitulation as quickly as possible.

Do read the whole piece. It’s very informative.

The basic agreement, gleaned from several news stories:

The Strait of Hormuz will open. Probably. Pretty soon. Trump said Friday, but there is also talk of needing to clear mines out of it first. Trump says Iran will not charge a toll to ships passing through the Strait. Iran says of course they will not charge a toll. Instead, Iran will charge a service fee.

The U.S. is ending its naval blockade of Iran’s ports. This is one point everyone seems to agree on, for now.

Iran will get paid money.  $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets will be released, also pretty soon, per Iran’s version of the deal. The Iranians also expect that sanctions on Iranian oil, petrochemical products and related exports will end, allowing Tehran full access to the resulting revenues. They also expect the United States and its allies to provide  $300 billion for reconstruction to Iran.

Iran’s enriched uranium will be further discussed. There is an official sixty-day period set aside for discussing Iran’s uranium.  If no agreements are reached, it’s possible military action could resume. But I doubt even Trump is dumb enough to start his war up again.

According to The Independent,

An Iranian official told Reuters that the draft memorandum includes an agreement by Tehran not to produce or acquire nuclear weapons, allows it to maintain the current status of its nuclear programme and prevents it from further uranium enrichment and expansion of its nuclear facilities.

The United States has agreed to allow Iran to dilute its stockpile of highly enriched uranium on Iranian soil under a more detailed future agreement, according to the reports.

That doesn’t look like exactly the same page to me. Tom Nichols:

The Trump administration will claim that it achieved a victory because it got an Iran without nuclear weapons. But this claim is both silly and redundant. Tehran had already pledged 10 years ago in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action not to seek nuclear weapons. No one should trust the Iranians, but before Trump unilaterally canceled the agreement in his first term, the JCPOA seemed to be working. More to the point, at the time Trump chose to go to war, Iran was nowhere near getting a bomb, and certainly not within weeks of a weapon, as Trump asserted. The effort to claim that this war has defeated Iran’s nuclear ambitions is merely an effort to distract from the administration’s failure to achieve regime change, which was always its main goal. …

… Trump has for weeks talked about getting rid of Iran’s “Nuclear Dust”—his odd term for the uranium now lying under the rubble produced by U.S. bombings—and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth claimed this morning that the United States has multiple plans for removing this material. The Iranians, however, are busily planting booby traps around the uranium to ensure that it stays where it is, and despite Hegseth’s blustering, America is not going to march into Iran and dig it out without Tehran’s consent. If anything, the Iranians now have every incentive to sprint to a bomb, and can do so with far less transparency than they had to endure under the JCPOA.

U.S. officials say that Iran has agreed “in principle” to allow international International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to verify the removal of enriched nuclear materials from specific sites. But it doesn’t sound to me that the Iranians have agreed to any such thing, in principle or otherwise. 

And then there’s Israel. Israel was not party to any of these negotiations. Trump seems to think he has the authority to order Israel to stop attacking Lebanon. And, of course, he doesn’t. As of this writing Netanyahu has not issued a statement about the deal. Other Israelis are calling it a “catastrophe” and say the agreement does not bind Israel.

The peace deal really is a disaster for Netanyahu. The New York Times  is running an analysis headlined Israel Counts the Ways That Netanyahu’s Iran Strategy Failed that’s worth reading. The deal so far doesn’t say anything about Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal or its funding of groups like Hezbollah or the Houthis. It hasn’t yet clarified anything about Iran’s nuclear program, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it never does. . Plus Netanyahu pissed off Trump.

Worse still for Mr. Netanyahu, who faces re-election in a few months and is behind in the polls, President Trump, the Israeli leader’s most valuable political asset, has publicly rebuked him multiple times in recent weeks.

While Mr. Trump has praised Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, as pragmatic, he has called Mr. Netanyahu “crazy,” ungrateful and lacking in judgment.

If this episode leads to Netanyahu losing power in Israel, that would be a great outcome.

So that’s all I know. My sense of things is that Trump is desperate enough to sign anything Iran puts in front of him. But we’ll see.

Multiple news outlets are reporting that Trump and Iran have agreed on a peace deal, and this information is coming from Trump and from Pakistan, which mediated the deal. WaPo:

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on social media that both sides “have declared the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon,” and that an official signing ceremony will be on Friday in Switzerland. Mediators would hold a series of meetings this week, Sharif said.

I expect tomorrow we’ll hear more about how much Trump caved to get the Strait of Hormuz open. The news stories so far are only reporting what Trump is saying is in the deal, which I don’t trust to be true. And it’s still uncertain if Israel will stop striking at Hezbollah in Lebanon, so we may be lucky to make it to the signing on Friday.

Trump apparently believed the deal would be signed today, possibly during an intermission in his White House UFC whatever-it-is. Axios:

The president is racing to save a deal that nearly collapsed the moment Israel struck Beirut, leaning on private diplomacy and public messaging to get it signed. Iranian officials haven’t confirmed a deal is expected to be signed today.

“It shook it up. It delayed the signing by a few hours. It was supposed to be now. Now it is scheduled for a few hours from now,” Trump said in a phone call.

The escalation in Lebanon took place hours before the U.S. and Iran were supposed to sign a deal to end their war. …

,,, Trump said he was shocked when his advisers called to brief him about the Israeli strike in Beirut, and he fumed at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“It is so bad — I couldn’t believe it. An hour before we are supposed to sign the deal.”

Trump acknowledged Hezbollah attacked Israel first but stressed it didn’t cause any damage and nobody had been killed.

“Why did Bibi have to do a fucking attack? I was so pissed off. I let him know. He has no fucking judgement. I let him know that,” Trump said.

Netanyahu may yet manage to screw up the deal. We’ll see.

It says something — I’m not sure what — that people seem much more interested in Trump’s name coming off a building than in the possible end of a war. I understand Trump’s name is completely removed from the Kennedy Center, btw, but I haven’t seen an “after” photo yet.

Iran has been saying they’re ready to sign an agreement. Now Trump is saying he’s ready to sign the deal tomorrow,  June 14. But Iran is saying it needs a few more days.

The details are awfully fuzzy. For example, at the signing of the agreement a 60-day period will begin during which the enriched uranium issue is to be addressed. But Washington seems to think this will be Iran’s getting rid of or de-radiating its nuclear fuel, while Iran seems to think the 60 days are for continued negotiations about what will be done with the nuclear fuel.

Israel isn’t party to the agreement, but Iran says that expects Israel to stop attacking Lebanon. Iran wants all sanctions lifted and all assets unfrozen, and it’s not clear to me if that has to be done or at least partly done before the Strait is opened. Iran also expects to continue to control the Strait and potentially charge fees for passing through it.

If anything significant happens I will update this post.

This afternoon WaPo posted a news story headlined U.S. and Iran close to signing peace deal, officials say, and the text made it sound as if, indeed, there were an actual deal and Iran was on board with it. Apparently there’s a memorandum with this deal spelled out, and several copies of it are floating around. What the bleep, I thought. Then I checked with the New York Times. Their headline said Conflicting Accounts Emerge of Possible Peace Deal. That sounds more like it. And then further down in the NY Times story we can read,

President Trump insisted on Friday that reports circulating about details of the proposed deal were incorrect. In a post on social media, he said the terms “Iran leaked” to the media “have NOTHING to do with the terms that were agreed to, in writing.”

That I can believe.

Reuters reported that Trump bristles over memorandum text that appears to favor Iran.

Versions and accounts of the memorandum were provided to Reuters by Western sources, sources from mediator Pakistan and senior Iranian sources. Similar drafts were also published in Iranian media.

The sources all stressed that the text was not yet final, with a Western source, an Iranian source and a Gulf source saying a key issue yet to be resolved was language on ceasing hostilities in Lebanon. Iran has demanded Israel end a campaign against Iran’s allies, the Hezbollah militia.

While there were minor differences in the accounts, all versions appeared to accept the principal terms proposed by Tehran over months of negotiations, while omitting key U.S. demands.

Reuters goes on to quote a U.S. official saying that a key term left out of Iran’s version of the memorandum is the destruction of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Another U.S. official said that release of the unfrozen assets would be contingent om the destruction of the uranium. The Iran version doesn’t mention that. (Note that, strictly speaking, the element uranium cannot be destroyed. However, there are ways to treat the uranium to reduce its isotopic enrichment level and make it less dangerous.)

So that’s what U.S. officials are expecting. However,

Under the terms of the text described by sources to Reuters, the United States would immediately begin providing Iran with billions of dollars in unfrozen assets, and waive sanctions on its oil exports, in return for Iran lifting its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, largely closed since the war began.

Discussion of Iran’s nuclear programme would be set aside for a 60-day period of talks on a final settlement. The only explicit reference to nuclear policy for now would be a restatement of Iran’s commitment not to seek nuclear weapons, already Tehran’s official position dating to its ratification of the U.N. Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1970.

Yesterday Trump announced to the press that Tehran had agreed to not seek nuclear weapons as if this were a huge breakthrough and not Iran’s stated policy going back decades.

Another issue Iran wants dealt with is an agreement for Israel to stop attacking Lebanon, but as much as Trump believes he “calls all the shots,” Netanyahu isn’t about to agree to anything just because Trump tells him to.

Right now there are a ton of headlines about everybody being optimistic that a deal is within reach, But it seems to me there’s a big gap between what Iran expects and what Trump expects. My sense of things is that it’s all up to Trump. He will either scuttle the thing or will cave and sign it. The latter would be best for everybody but Trump, which is why I don’t think he’ll do it. We’ll see.

In other news: A judge denied a last-minute attempt to keep Trump’s name on the Kennedy Center building, and I understand a crowd has gathered to watch the name come off. Plus there are live cams. There is scaffolding up, but so far I can’t see anybody doing anything.

Over the past several hours there have been several alarming stories about Trump’s DoJ and FBI taking steps to investigate and bring charges of election fraud. This needs a post of its own, but here are a couple of links.

FBI raids Ohio voting rights organization

What the DOJ’s investigation into Los Angeles elections is really about

WaPo is reporting that oil and gas executives have warned Trump that oil reserves are dangerously low and that gas prices could surge.

With about 88 percent of the votes counted, Graham Platner has about 72 percent of the votes in the Maine Democratic Senate primary. Gov. Janet Mills, who was still on the ballot, got about 19.5 percent, and most of the rest went to another Dem named David Costello. This suggests to me that Platner is still competitive against Susan Collins in the general election. But I don’t know how much of the Platner vote was from early and mail-in votes that might have been cast before the recent negative news about him. Fingers crossed.

Trump is furious about a New York Times story by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein Files. This is worth reading. When the Epstein crisis first hit the White House last year, Trump wanted the whole thing buried. Of course, it couldn’t be. J.D. Vance appears to have been the only one to realize that; he lobbied to just release everything and let the chips fall. But others disagreed, and administration officials soon were feuding over what to do about the files. Eventually they adopted a strategy of releasing carefully curated bits while talking about how transparent they were being.

Among other things, it was decided FBI interview notes of Epstein survivors could not see the light of day, ever. I noted this because I understand the survivors have been asking for those notes especially, because they want to read what the notes say about their own interviews. I don’t believe any have been released to this day.

In other news, inflation is now at a three-year high, mostly because of gas prices. Way to go, Trump. Trump and his cabinet all appear to be in denial about how hard things are getting even for people who voted for Trump. See, for example, Paul Krugman’s new substack column, Breaking the Heart of the Heartland.

In brief: Trump officials like Kevin Hassett, the administration’s top alleged economist, say that low consumer sentiment numbers are “being driven by Democrats who have Trump derangement syndrome.” And recently Trump went to Wisconsin to hold a “roundtable” with farmers in which he was the only one at the table and apparently did all the talking. Trump is very sure that farmers all love him. And it was largely rural America that put Trump back in the White House. “In 2024 Donald Trump narrowly won the popular vote, with only a 1.5 percentage point margin. But he won rural areas by 30 points,” Krugman writes. He continues,

Trump won rural areas by such a large margin because farmers were wildly optimistic about what he would do for them. The Purdue/CME Ag Economy Barometer, which is basically an index of farmers’ economic sentiment, surged with Trump’s victory. …

…Today, the rural Trump bump is nowhere to be seen. In fact, white rural voters’ views about Trump’s economic policy have turned astonishingly negative. … They are almost as negative on the economy as the population as a whole, with only 32% of rural whites approving of Trump’s handling of the economy, and 68% disapproving. Trump has made the rural economy so bad that reality has overridden Trump voters’ usual tendency to make excuses for him.

Trump is, apparently, utterly oblivious to this. In his mind all the people who voted for him in 2024 still love him as much as ever.

And it’s not about to get better. In the not-war with Iran, war-like activities between Iran and the U.S. and everybody else in the region are escalating. There is no peace deal on the horizon, and I say there won’t be as long as Trump is president.  Oil reserves are running out, and gas prices are likely to climb even higher in the coming months.

Shifting gears a bit — here’s something not about Trump I found genuinely interesting at The Atlantic. See How Britain Became as Poor as Mississippi: A case study in self-sabotage by Idrees Kahloon. First, is Britain really as poor as Mississippi? Kahloon writes,

The country’s output per person is now only just above that of Mississippi, America’s poorest state—and that slight lead is only achieved thanks to London. Outside the capital, in places where tourists do not visit, living standards fall well below Mississippi’s. 

In brief — 20 years ago, Britain’s economy was much, much better. Then came the financial sector meltdown of 2008. The government adopted austerity economics — trying to grow out of an economic slump mostly by cutting government spending to reduce the government’s debt.

Rather than increase spending to revive depressed demand, as modern Keynesians would counsel, the government, then led by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, opted to slash budgets as revenue plunged. The theory was that fiscal discipline—cutting spending more sharply than Britain’s peer countries—would inspire confidence and spur growth. At the time, deficits and debt were seen as immoral; unlike profligate Greece, Britain would manage its affairs prudently.

You’ll recognize that this is very similar to Republican economics. The only difference is that the Brits didn’t cut taxes on rich people. But even with higher taxes, revenues are down. And among the government services that have declined is the famous National Health Service.

The National Health Service, the celebrated pillar of the British cradle-to-grave welfare state, has a backlog of 6 million patients—almost a tenth of the population—waiting for treatment. The health service now has to spend more money settling maternity-malpractice claims than it does on actually providing maternity care. Many Brits can neither obtain an appointment with a publicly funded dentist nor afford a private one; in a 2023 survey, one in 10 reported doing DIY dental work, in extreme cases extracting their own teeth or gluing broken crowns back together.

The NHS had been underfunded for years before the financial crisis. Maggie Thatcher seems to have tried to starve it to death, as I remember. When I was in Wales in 2005 I remember getting an earful from one of my Welsh cousins about how badly the NHS had deteriorated even then. At the time the UK was paying less per capita for health care than just about any other country in the world. They have a system designed to be cost-effective, but it still requires some funding. And now they’ve just about killed it. Note that killing it didn’t make the economy better.

And, one more time — Keynes was right. 

Shifting gears again — for another good read, see Josh Kovensky at TPM, ‘A Crock of Shit’: Amid Misconduct Allegations, Broadview Six Transcripts Offer Rare Window into Grand Jury. 

Now, for sports news. A huge number of World Cup tickets remain unsold. What will FIFA do, if anything, to avoid empty seats?

Trump will blessedly be absent for tonight’s Knicks-Spurs game in Madison Square Garden. The weather could be a bit iffy for outdoor watch parties, though. I hope the rain doesn’t fall and the Knicks win and New Yorkers have a great night.

So on Sunday Trump asked Netanyahu to not strike Iran and mess up the alleged ongoing peace talks. Netanyahu agreed. Also, too,

Trump told the Financial Times that Netanyahu “won’t have any choice” but to accept any deal the U.S. secures from negotiations with Iran.

“I call the shots. I call all the shots. He doesn’t call the shots,” Trump said of Netanyahu.

Right. And then Israel struck Iran.

Update: I’ve learned a watch party was set up at Bryant Park, which is in midtown near Grand Central and the main Library building, and far enough from Madison Square Garden that it’s not a security issue for Trump. The space is already full, I understand. There are some other watch party venues that should still be open, but anyplace within a few blocks of Madison Square Garden is off limits.

They are still counting votes in California, but at least we know that Democrat Xavier Becerra will advance to the general election. I would think that would make him a huge favorite to be the next governor. The number two spot is still uncertain, but MAGA Steve Hilton is slightly ahead of Dem Tom Steyer.

I need to take a break from complaining about Trump, so I will instead complain about that other scourge of contemporary America, centrist Dems. There’s a great piece by Monica Potts at The New Republic about a recent gathering of a center-left political action committee called Welcome PAC. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of it, but I take it it’s been around for a while. Something that comes across in Potts’s insightful writing is how reactive the centrists are. There’s an emptiness to them. They define themselves entirely by declaring what they are not. It’s as if they have no fixed core of values or goals other than winning elections.

“Centrism, in reality, is almost always defined by where it lies on the spectrum between two extremes: Its politics are almost monomaniacally focused on arguing that those who stand apart have gone too far,” Potts writes. And I’m thinking back to the 1970s and 1980s, when the New Deal coalition was coming apart and the New Left was fading, and Reaganism was on the rise. The response from the Democrats was the New Democrats, led by Bill Clinton, which turned its back on the muscular anti-poverty programs of the New Deal and Great Society and instead looked to market-based solutions to hardship, ways to tweak the economy to maybe make it work a bit better for poor folks (while making more money for rich folks).

Alex Pareene wrote back in 2022 that “Clintonites taught their party how to talk about helping people without actually doing it.”

The crew that would come to take over the Democratic Party organized themselves, in the 1980s, around the idea that the party had become discredited among the public because it was in thrall to its more liberal elements. These “New Democrats” gravitated toward Gary Hart, who unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic Party nomination in 1984, positioned as the candidate of “new ideas” against Walter Mondale, ostensibly the embodiment of stale Great Society liberalism. Hart, along with allies like Representative Tim Wirth, articulated what Geismer calls “larger generational skepticism with large institutions and bureaucracy.” In practice, “large institutions” tended to mean unions and government agencies. The New Democrats were similarly allergic to “transactional politics” and “special interest groups,” which Geismer helpfully defines as “African Americans, women, white farmers, and, especially, organized labor.”

As the Republican Party moved further right through the 1900s and into the 21st century, the Democrats seemed to lose any identity at all. Who are their constituents? They tend to attract people who are better educated, but is that because of what the Democrats offer or because at least they are not Republicans? And meanwhile, in large swaths of working-class America people at least hear Republicans directly addressing their problems, even if what the Republicans say is often nuts if not hateful. If you don’t understand economics it’s easier to believe that minorities are taking your jobs and stealing your money, somehow, than to grasp what’s really going on. Especially when you don’t see the other party going out of its way to help you all that much.

And now it’s 2026. Potts describes a Welcome PAC speaker on health care reform: “On this last point, Mark Cuban spoke at length about his ideas for health care, which rely largely on hoary ideas like HSA spending accounts—like a man who missed the yearslong health care debate leading up to the election of President Barack Obama and the passage of the Affordable Care Act.”

Most of the people in the upper echelons of the Democratic Party today came up through the ranks during the New Democrat era and are pretty much stuck in its thinking. I see the New Democrats as less about an ideology than a strategy. When movement conservatism was on the rise and gaining popularity, Bill Clinton and others positioned themselves just to the left of, but not directly in opposition to, Republican policies. And that worked for a time. It was a useful strategy.

But now the GOP has just plain gone bat guano crazy and so far Right to a place where democracy cannot survive. And the centrists don’t know how to do real opposition. It’s not in their nature. It’s why they’ve been so ineffectual and so slow to stand up to Trump. And just where is the center any more? If you’re defining center as a mid-point between two ends, the center is way to the right of where it used to be. The so-called “far left,” on the other hand, would have been right at home in the New Deal.

At the New York Times Jamelle Bouie has a new column following up the one I wrote about a couple of days ago (which I could tell from your comments most of you didn’t read, btw), The new column is about what must be done after Trump. When Trump is finally gone, Bouie writes, what will be needed is not a restoration but a reconstruction. And for inspiration he looked to the Congress that saw the end of the Civil War and brought us the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. This was the Congress of the “Radical Republicans.” They were not shy about using every scrap of power the Constitution gave them while keeping a conservative Supreme Court and a useless President Andrew Johnson in their places.  Yes, eventually much of their work would be undone and Reconstruction would be unfinished. But It was an amazing thing for a while. Bouie:

As I wrote, should Democrats have control of the White House and both branches of Congress in 2029, they will be faced with a project of reconstruction, not restoration. You could do worse in those circumstances than to ask: What would Charles Sumner do? What would Thaddeus Stevens do? What would John Bingham do?

They wouldn’t stand by and allow their project to be destroyed by the hostile forces arrayed against them. They would look to the Constitution which, for all of its flaws, gives Congress the power and authority to make its vision reality.

But that’s going to require leaders who have vision and some core convictions that are not just a reaction to what the other side is up to. I don’t think the current leadership of the Democratic Party is up to it.