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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Endgames [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-06-17
We begin today with Robin Wright of The New Yorker wondering what is Israel’s endgame for its war with Iran.
Israel’s campaign, militarily and rhetorically, has quickly evolved beyond its initial targets. Over the weekend, it hit Iran’s energy facilities, including a gas depot and an oil refinery, triggering huge fires and spewing smoke across the sprawling capital of about ten million people. “Tehran is burning,” the Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz, boasted on X. Energy resources were struck in other cities, too, sabotaging Iran’s main sources of revenue. Israeli officials also began telling local and foreign media outlets that assassinating Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader since 1989, was “not off limits.” (President Donald Trump reportedly vetoed the idea, but the fact that Israeli leaders even discussed it with their counterparts in Washington reflects how far they’re willing to go.) Israel has long had military superiority over Iran. In the past two years, it has conducted brazen air strikes and novel covert operations against the Islamic Republic’s allies across the Middle East, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen. It has assassinated senior political leaders and killed thousands of fighters. Israel has even more momentum now. But achieving conclusive results will be tough—whether that’s obliterating Iran’s nuclear program, destroying its sophisticated arsenal of missiles, crippling its economy, or spurring a counter-revolution. [...] The odds of Israeli-inspired regime change...seem small right now. On X, Danny Citrinowicz, the former head of Iran analysis for Israeli military intelligence, warned that Netanyahu’s government has embarked on a war based on the “illusion” that it can suck in the U.S. for the “hidden goal” of overthrowing the Islamic Republic. “The bigger problem,” he wrote, is “how exactly . . . Israel intend[s] to end the war and preserve its achievements without entering a war of attrition” that becomes open-ended, like its war in Gaza, with no clear exit strategy.
Zeeshawn Aleem of MSNBC notes that the time for protest “fatigue” appears to have ended.
IMHO, I think that Trump’s popular vote win in the 2024 presidential election accounts for much of the “timidity” and even shock from the Democratic Party overall, including some of the party leadership. (The MSM capitulation, by and large, to MAGA coverage has also been a huge factor in a downplaying of the resistance.)
I will note that the mass protests that I have seen televised and even live here in Chicago seem to be better organized than many of the protests during Trump’s first term.
Chris Geidner of LawDork tries to see some the conflicts beneath the surface of many of the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous decisions last week.
Unanimous decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court are the thing dreams are made of. They are the idyllic manifestation of a non-political court. Or so those seeking to advance that conception of the court would have us believe. In reality, unanimous decisions can — and often do — hide conflict or, at least, the possibility of future conflict. The court can want this for itself for many reasons. Institutionally, the court is stronger when it presents a united front — and it is almost certain that many of the decisions still to be issued will not be unanimous. Additionally, decisions in recent years have challenged the court’s standing with the public. And, of course, President Donald Trump adds further reasons for the justices to seek unanimity when they can. This past week provided great examples of that unanimity — and what it hides. The court issued six rulings issued on June 12. Four were unanimous and the other two were 8-1 decisions with Justice Neil Gorsuch dissenting. Of the six, four addressed jurisdictional or deadline-related questions. I’d like to spend a little time...on the final two — both of which were unanimous and yet included writings that told us there was much more going on beneath that unanimity.
Jordain Carney, Lisa Kashinsky, and Mia McCarthy report for POLITICO that no agreement was reached last night within one of the major committees overseeing the Republican budget bill.
Signs of discontent within the Republican Conference came as Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo privately briefed his colleagues Monday night on his portion of the megabill central to enacting key elements of President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda. Crapo’s committee is responsible for some of the most politically consequential components of the party-line package, including changes to Medicaid, the fate of clean-energy energy tax credits and the state-and-local tax deduction that is important to high-tax state House Republicans. [...] The briefing Monday was designed to explain the panel’s rationale, answer questions and alleviate any anxieties. But immediate reaction from lawmakers across the ideological spectrum upon that meeting’s conclusion indicated leadership has a ways to go — especially as Republicans still hope to meet their self-imposed July Fourth deadline for clearing the larger bill for Trump’s signature. [...] Senate Republicans agreed to nothing in the Monday night meeting, according to attendees, with Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Crapo both emphasizing that Republicans were engaged in an ongoing negotiation — both among themselves and with their House counterparts, who passed their version of the megabill last month. Thune afterward summed up his message to the conference as: “We gotta get this done.”
Finally today, Ian Youngs of BBC News reports that research suggests that social media is now the main source of US news for a majority.
Social media and video networks have become the main source of news in the US, overtaking traditional TV channels and news websites, research suggests. More than half (54%) of people get news from networks like Facebook, X and YouTube - overtaking TV (50%) and news sites and apps (48%), according to the Reuters Institute. [...] Podcaster Joe Rogan was the most widely-seen personality, with almost a quarter (22%) of the population saying they had come across news or commentary from him in the previous week. [...] The report also stated that usage of X for news is "stable or increasing across many markets", with the biggest uplift in the US. It added that since Elon Musk took over the network in 2022, "many more right-leaning people, notably young men, have flocked to the network, while some progressive audiences have left or are using it less frequently". In the US, the proportion that self-identified as being on the right tripled after Musk's takeover.
Try to have the best possible day that you can everyone!
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