July 14, 2026

Good morning! Today is Tuesday, July 14th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Jack Hunter offers a sober South Carolinian's reckoning with the late Senator Lindsey Graham, whose three-decade career made him Washington's most tireless advocate for open-ended war, from Iraq to Syria to Iran—and whose invocations of Hiroshima and Iwo Jima reveal a politician strikingly dismissive of human cost. Harrison Berger reports that hawks in Europe and inside America's own national security bureaucracy are steadily pulling President Trump into deeper ownership of the Ukraine war, with CIA Director John Ratcliffe reportedly pitching strikes on Russian refineries on the golf course while analysts like John Mearsheimer and Glenn Diesen warn the escalation could push the Kremlin toward nuclear demonstration. Mark Jamison argues that as Beijing moves to lock down its frontier AI models as strategic assets, Washington should resist the temptation to mirror. and now for the details. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina died unexpectedly on Saturday at the age of seventy-one. His passing closes a three-decade congressional career during which he became perhaps the most consistent voice in Washington for open-ended military intervention abroad. In a reflection at The American Conservative, Jack Hunter, a fellow South Carolinian and longtime constituent, offers a sober accounting of Graham's public record, arguing that a pro-life ethic requires honesty even in eulogy. As Hunter recounts, Graham backed the Iraq War through its darkest years, lobbied President Obama to send twenty thousand American troops back into Iraq and Syria in 2015, pushed for military strikes on Syria in 2013, and this year invoked Iwo Jima while urging escalation against Iran—a battle in which more than twenty-six thousand Americans were killed or wounded. Hunter also notes Graham's May 2024 comments citing Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a model for Israel's campaign in Gaza, telling Israel to do "whatever" was necessary. Hunter writes that even the Daily Wire's Matt Walsh was taken aback by Graham's Iwo Jima remark, and that Graham appeared, throughout his career, dismissive of the human cost of the wars he championed. Hunter closes by writing that humans should never strive for inhumanity, and that he wishes Graham had thought the same. President Trump, who once promised to end the war in Ukraine within twenty-four hours of taking office, this past week described Ukrainian strikes on Russia's energy infrastructure as an "escalation" that could help end the conflict, and pledged to license Patriot missile production for Kiev. Harrison Berger reports for The American Conservative that hawks in Europe and within America's own national security bureaucracy are successfully selling the President a narrative he had previously resisted. Berger cites New York Times reporting that CIA Director John Ratcliffe personally pitched a campaign against Russian oil refineries to the President on the golf course, and Wall Street Journal reporting that Trump is being shown intelligence assessments designed to leave him impressed with Ukraine's strike capabilities. Berger cites John Mearsheimer, who told TAC that new Western aid will have hardly any effect on the battlefield but could push the Kremlin toward hardliners like Sergey Karaganov, who advocate a tactical nuclear demonstration to restore deterrence. Glenn Diesen argues the only remaining Russian response may be escalation toward nuclear war. Berger also notes that the city of Lviv saw riots last week protesting Zelensky's sweeping conscription regime, with Euronews counting more than one hundred such incidents this year. Mearsheimer describes Ukraine as being in a demographic death spiral. Following the Ankara NATO summit, Diesen concludes, diplomacy is dead, and this is now Trump's war. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.