6.29 Zohran Mamdani on NBC’s Meet the Press: “I don’t think we should have billionaires because frankly it is so much money in a moment of so much inequality,”
6.28 Tim, Shawn and I journey to the Bronx, where the A’s mash the sluggish Yanks 7-0. Pictured: Judge, Stanton, Volpe.
6.26 Max Hastings on Bloomberg, on Trump at the NATO summit: “Leaders who may have wondered what life was like under a Roman emperor now know. As they struggle to do business with the most powerful man on earth, they are obliged to abase themselves, to pander, to profess assent when privately many dissent. . . . No one in the room… save the principal guest believed that US and Israeli bombs had set back Iran ‘by decades.’ But they kept silent, and will continue to do so, lest they provoke his wrath, so easily roused. . . .Like it or not, Trump is apparently unchallenged master of the richest nation on earth. Many of us feel sad that we have shrunk so far that we must make this gesture. But just as Trump has no respect for others, so the rest of us must, I suppose, sacrifice our self-respect to him. If it helps to save Ukraine, it will be worth it.”
6.26 Lalo Schifrin dies at 93.
6.26 Bill Moyers dies at 91.
6.26 Erik Baker in Harper’s: [M]any observers describe Trump as a social Darwinist. This interpretation of Darwin’s work, celebrating the triumph of the strong and the extermination of the weak, is a common thread uniting the otherwise ideologically disparate set of historical leaders Trump has praised, from the American empire builders of the late nineteenth century to (according to his former chief of staff John Kelly) Adolf Hitler. Darwin saw in animal instincts “one general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings,” to wit: “multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.” Trump, like many among his social Darwinist predecessors, surely views the impulses he is determined to unleash in similar terms. Of all the various isms proposed to capture Trump’s ideology, social Darwinism has perhaps the most explanatory power. . . .Since Trump’s initial rise to power, the social Darwinist label has served to mark him as an aberration, someone who failed to learn the lessons that the twentieth century was supposed to have taught us. On the campaign trail in 2016, Tim Kaine implied that Trump’s social Darwinism animated his criticisms of NATO and the system of alliances America built after World War II; last October, Jonathan Chait argued that the social Darwinist commitments Trump shares with the rest of the Republican Party distinguish it not only from the Democrats but “from conservative parties in other industrialized democracies.” But for much of the twentieth century, American liberals had trouble admitting that there even were social Darwinists anymore. In Social Darwinism in American Thought, the 1944 book that popularized the term, Richard Hofstadter writes that the ideology, at least “as a conscious philosophy,” had “largely disappeared” in the United States by the end of World War I, thanks to its uncomfortably Teutonic overtones. Reasoning along similar lines, the historian Carl N. Degler asserted in 1991 that the struggle against Nazism had at last left social Darwinism “definitely killed, not merely scotched.” But ideas that are truly dead rarely return to life so swiftly and with such vitality. What we’re witnessing is not an aberration but the latest eruption of a supposedly discredited ideology that was never truly extinguished. Even after the Holocaust, social Darwinism quietly remained a meeting ground where defenders of class, race, and gender hierarchy could make common cause. What historians such as Hofstadter and Degler mistook for its death was merely its tactical retreat and metamorphosis. To understand how this happened, we must reconsider what we thought we knew about the world America built in the aftermath of its war against fascism. We must contrast our romanticized view of liberal democratic values with Trump’s blunt characterization of American society: “It’s a cruel world and people are ruthless.”’
6.25 Bloomberg: “Mayor Fiorello La Guardia famously said “there is no Democratic or Republican way of cleaning the streets.” For generations, that truism captured the pragmatic instincts of New Yorkers who favored competence over ideology. But Zohran Mamdani’s rise — mirroring that of progressive counterparts in Boston, Chicago and Cleveland — suggests Democrats aren’t just splintering. They’re testing what happens when movement politics meets municipal power. As such, it follows an international pattern of voters disaffected by business-as-usual turning to anti-establishment candidates, from Romania to Argentina. Now, New York, poised to elect its first Muslim mayor and its youngest in more than a century, is suddenly the front line in a fight over what comes next — and who gets to run the city that runs so much else.”
6.24 Washington Post Editorial Board: “The worst problems with US government trace back to how the [political] actors in this structure impede good work. Our budget deficits are not primarily a result of waste, fraud and abuse, undetected by hapless civil servants; they are the result of Congress authorizing more spending than taxes. Congress also passes vague laws and expects the civil service to fill in the blanks, while reserving the right to haul civil servants into a camera-filled hearing if they don’t like the result — after which lawmakers often “fix” the problem by passing new laws that complicate the bureaucracy’s work. They have also passed penny-wise, pound-foolish legislation designed to keep civil servants from wasting money or abusing their power. Instead of wasting money, the civil service wastes a lot of (very expensive) bureaucratic time complying with these rules, often with suboptimal results.”
6.24 The New York Times: “A preliminary classified U.S. report says the American bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran set back the country’s nuclear program by only a few months, according to officials familiar with the findings. . . .Before the attack, U.S. intelligence agencies had said that if Iran tried to rush to making a bomb, it would take about three months. After the U.S. bombing run and days of attacks by the Israeli Air Force, the report by the Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that the program had been delayed, but by less than six months. The report also said that much of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was moved before the strikes, which destroyed little of the nuclear material. Iran may have moved some of that to secret locations. , , ,The initial damage assessment suggests that President Trump’s claim that Iran’s nuclear facilities were “obliterated” was overstated.”
6.24 Punchbowl News reports that in a meeting with Senate Republicans, Mitch McConnell said “I know a lot of us are hearing from people back home about Medicaid. But they’ll get over it”.
6.24 In the Democratic primary for New York City mayor, Andrew Cuomo is upset by Zohran Mamdani.
6.24 Michael Kimmage in the Times: “It’s wrong to say Mr. Putin aimed to sunder Russia’s relations with the West. He wanted to reorient them in his favor, reclaiming a role in European affairs by weakening the West. Had Russia quickly won its war in 2022, he might have got what he wanted. Russia might have claimed a place in Eastern Europe. A chastened West might have bowed to Russian prowess, winding back the NATO alliance. Panicked neighboring countries might have broken away from NATO or the European Union, currying Moscow’s favor. The trans-Atlantic relationship, bedrock of the West, might have cracked. None of that has come to pass. Instead, Mr. Putin has done something far worse for his country than initiating an unwon and unwinnable war: He has compelled Europe to organize itself as a military counterweight to Russia. Germany is rapidly rearming; new patterns of military consultation and cooperation are spreading across Europe; Finland and Sweden have joined NATO; and Brexit has been sidelined by a meaningful security agreement between Britain and the European Union. Formidable resources are being gathered to keep Russia out of Europe. Russia’s only path to a future partnership with Europe is to end the war on Ukrainian terms, which Mr. Putin will not do.”
6.24 Bloomberg: The question now is whether Tehran is done or just beginning its retaliation. Trump, who Andreas Kluth says chose to go after Iran only after “he saw the Israeli strikes succeeding so photogenically” on Fox News, is hoping the conflict de-escalates. Yet Andreas hears “ominous echoes from previous American presidents prematurely proclaiming ‘Mission Accomplished.’ In Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and other places, the first part — involving not soft power or diplomacy but hardware and bombs, where America is unmatched — proved to be the easiest … It’s what follows — and not just in the subsequent weeks, but over years — that poses the problems.”
6.24 Where the Money Is: America’s obscene wealth gap, a presentation by The New Republic featuring Joe Conason, Abigail Disney, Tim Noah, and Michael Tomasky.
6.23 David Frum in The Atlantic: “Trump did the right thing, but he did that right thing in the wrongest possible way: without Congress, without competent leadership in place to defend the United States against terrorism, and while waging a culture war at home against half the nation. Trump has not put U.S. boots on the ground to fight Iran, but he has put U.S. troops on the ground for an uninvited military occupation of California.”
6.23 National Constitution Center with Akhil Reed Amar, David Blight and Annette Gordon-Reed.
6.23 Jonathan Chiat in The Atlantic on Trump‘s Big Beautiful Bill: “[T]he product is not a better iteration of the original Trumponomics, which consisted largely of conventional Republican policy, but a worse one, much worse. It has managed, amazingly, to abandon the two tribes’ [tech right and populist right] most attractive proposals while retaining the least-appealing elements of each. It discards the futuristic ambition of the tech right while preserving its social Darwinism. It leans into the closed-off nostalgia of the populist right while ignoring populists’ impulse to help workers. One measure of the dismal result of the administration’s agenda is the slew of projections about the fiscal and economic effects of its tariffs and the megabill racing through Congress. The policies, in combination, amount to an enormous transfer of resources from people at the bottom of the economic scale to those at the top. The Yale Budget Lab projects that the bottom four-fifths of the income distribution would be made poorer by the combined tariffs and megabill, while only the most affluent would come out ahead. That is an incredible result for an administration that is increasing the national debt. Various economic models disagree as to whether the megabill would have no effect on economic growth or actually inhibit it. This would be a normal outcome for a plan that would shrink the deficit, but it’s a difficult result to pull off when you are pumping stimulus into the economy. The perverse consequence of Trump’s plan to tariff foreign trade, cut taxes for the affluent, and take health insurance from 10 million Americans is a smaller pie, divided less equally.”
6.23 Trump on Truth Social: “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”
6.23 Thomas L. Friedman in the Times: To paraphrase something my friend Nahum Barnea, an Israeli Yedioth Ahronoth columnist, said to me the other day: I will unapologetically resist Netanyahu’s annexationist agenda, his refusal to even consider a Palestinian state under secure conditions and his attempt to overthrow Israel’s Supreme Court, as if Israel were not at war with Iran. And I will unapologetically praise Netanyahu for taking on this terrible Iranian regime, as if Israel were not in the grip of its own Bibi-led Jewish supremacists who threaten a more inclusive Middle East in their own way. I will unapologetically praise Trump for efforts to shrink Iran’s nuclear-bomb-making capabilities, as if he were not engaged in a dangerous autocratic project at home. And I will resist with all my might Trump’s autocratic moves at home as if he were not taking on Iran’s autocracy abroad. All are true and need to be said. If we want to see the forces of integration triumph in this region, what Trump has done militarily today is necessary, but it is not sufficient. The real knockout blow to Iran and all the resisters — and the keystone that would make it easy as pie for Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq to normalize relations with Israel and consolidate the victory for the forces of inclusion — is for Trump to tell Netanyahu: “Get out of Gaza in return for a cease-fire from Hamas and the return of all Israeli hostages. Let an Arab peacekeeping force move in there, blessed by a reformed Palestinian Authority, and then begin what will have to be a long process of Palestinians building a credible governing structure in return for a halt to all Israeli settlement building in the West Bank. That would create the best conditions to birth a Palestinian state there.” If Trump can combine shrinking Iran’s power with building toward a two-state solution — and aiding Ukraine to resist Russia as unabashedly as he is aiding Israel to resist Iran — he will make a real contribution to peace, security and inclusion in both Europe and the Middle East that would be historic.
6.23 Iran fires missiles at US base in Qatar.
6.22 Tom Nichols in The Atlantic: “The president’s statement was a farrago of contradictions: He said, for example, that the main Iranian nuclear sites were “completely and totally obliterated”—but it will take time to assess the damage, and he has no way of knowing this. He claimed that the Iranian program has been destroyed—but added that there are still “many targets” left. He said that Iran could suffer even more in the coming days—but the White House has reportedly assured Iran through back channels that these strikes were, basically, a one-and-done, and that no further U.S. action is forthcoming.”
6.22 The Oklahoma City Thunder defeat the Indiana Pacers 103-91, and win the NBA title 4 games to 3.
6.21 US bombs Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities.
6.21 NY Writers Institute trip to Manhattan.
6.21 A line in an article about Harry Crews in Harper’s: “[H]e exists not in the frenzy of obsession, but in its aftermath, life’s dull and shapeless coda.”
6.19 The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
6.19 The Los Angeles Dodgers ask U.S. ICE agents to leave the Dodger Stadium parking lot.
6.17 The Florida Panthers defeat the Edmonton Oilers 5-1, and capture the Stanley Cup 4 game to 2. The series was close and exciting for the first four games, then petered out with a couple one-sided duds.