As I wrote yesterday, I do not plan to watch the SOTU tonight. The NY Times usually has a live running commentary on major speeches from several political reporters, and I’d rather just keep an eye on that to see how it’s going. I’m sure the juicy bits will be all over social media soon enough. If anything significant happens I might comment here, though.

The first thing I read this morning is by Paul Waldman at Public Notice, Trump is about to start a war he hasn’t bothered to explain. Trump is still moving military assets toward Iran and talking about maybe attacking or maybe bombing; he hasn’t made up his mind. He seems very unclear what he wants to do or what he wants to accomplish by it. I see there are plans for Secretary of State Marco Rubio to brief House and Senate leadership, along with intelligence committee leaders, at the White House today. Whether that has happened yet I do not know. Trump certainly hasn’t asked Congress for any authorization to attack anybody, however. Yes, I know, that whole Constitution thing is just too confusing.

At the same time, as Waldman points out, there is no particularly compelling reason to attack Iran right this minute. IMO this whole thing has the hallmarks of something Trump just got in his head. Maybe it’s a distraction; maybe he thinks being a war president will boost his polling numbers. Maybe he thinks if he can get a good war going he can cancel the midterms. Who knows?

The real military — the top brass minus Pistol Pete Hegseth — does not want to attack Iran as long as not attacking Iran is a viable option, as it is. After reports of the chair of the Joint Chiefs warned administration officials that taking on Iran would be very risky and costly, Trump had a massive tantrum. .

Eric Schmitt reports for the New York Times:

President Trump said on Monday that Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, believed that any eventual military action ordered against Iran would be “something easily won.”

But that is not what General Caine has told Mr. Trump and other senior advisers in recent high-level White House meetings on Iran, people briefed on internal administration deliberations said.

Instead, General Caine has said that the United States has amassed forces in the Middle East to carry out a small or medium strike, but that there would be a potentially high risk of American casualties and that such an operation would have a negative effect on U.S. weapon stockpiles. General Caine has also underscored that the operations under consideration in Iran would be much more difficult than the successful capture last month of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela.

I sincerely think the best thing that could happen for the U.S. is if Trump had a complete meltdown giving the State of the Union, a meltdown so obvious that even his base could see he’s not mentally capable of making serious decisions about anything. If he were removed from office we’d end up with J.D. Vance, but I think Vance might be somewhat less dangerous. I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him, but perhaps his instincts for self-preservation would moderate him some. And nobody likes Vance, which means he won’t have the political capital to step too far out of line.

Lots of good stuff to read elsewhere. I especially recommend How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism by Adam Bonica and Jake Grumbach. It beautifully lays out the case for why the Democrats needs to get over their fetish for centrism. And there’s another good piece by Michael Tomasky at The New Republic, The Real State of the Union: Millions of Americans Are Just Disgusted.

Update: Another suggested link: The boys’ club: How Epstein’s influence shaped the exclusion of women in STEM