July 20, 2026

Good morning! Today is Monday, July 20th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. A third American service member was killed this weekend in the Iran war, bringing the U.S. death toll to seventeen as CENTCOM completes its eighth consecutive night of strikes and Iranian attacks batter Jordan, Bahrain, and Kuwait. Peter Van Buren asks why the State Department has been sidelined in Trump's second term, arguing that Foggy Bottom's culture of leaks, dissent memos, and impeachment-era resistance has left it under siege and largely bypassed by special envoys. Scott Greer warns that Colorado's nomination of eccentric outsider Victor Marx shows the GOP's "Insane Clown Party" streak, but argues it poses far less danger than the Democratic Socialists actually winning primaries on the left. and now for the details. We begin with breaking news from the Iran war. U.S. Central Command announced Sunday that a third American service member has been killed in action this weekend. The service member, whose name has not yet been released, died in northern Iraq during what CENTCOM described as a controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian one-way attack drone. Another service member was injured in that incident and is receiving medical care. CENTCOM also confirmed that it has recovered unidentified human remains from Jordan, where a separate Iranian attack on Saturday resulted in two confirmed American deaths and one service member listed as missing in action. Efforts to identify those remains, the Pentagon says, are ongoing. As Luke Nicastro reports for The American Conservative, the three confirmed fatalities this weekend bring the total number of U.S. troops killed in the conflict to seventeen. Those American deaths come as the Iran war enters its one hundred and forty-second day. As Harrison Berger reports, CENTCOM has now completed its eighth consecutive night of airstrikes on Iran, targeting what it describes as Iranian coastal surveillance and air defense facilities, maritime capabilities, missile and drone storage sites, and Revolutionary Guard forces linked to the July 17 attacks on U.S. troops in Jordan. Iranian officials say American strikes hit civilian infrastructure in the port city of Chabahar and knocked out power and desalination pumps in Jask, leaving more than ten thousand people without drinking water. Iran, in turn, launched drones and missiles at targets in Jordan, Bahrain, and Kuwait. Kuwait says a power and desalination plant was struck for the second time in two days. The international airport in Aqaba, Jordan was evacuated Sunday after what the U.S. embassy called a specific and credible threat. Berger notes that Jordan has become a focal point for Iranian attacks because other American allies in the region have restricted Washington's ability to base troops on and fly aircraft over their territory. The Pentagon says more than fifty thousand U.S. service members are currently deployed across the Middle East. In a post on Truth Social Sunday, President Trump called on Congress to add Iran to the Russian sanctions bill. Turning to the diplomatic front of that same conflict, The American Conservative asks why the State Department has been so thoroughly sidelined under the Trump administration's second term. As Peter Van Buren writes, eighteen months in, State is not just marginal, it appears under siege. More than thirteen hundred employees were cut in a reduction in force last year, ambassadorial posts sit empty from Moldova to Cyprus to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and America's most sensitive diplomacy, including negotiations with Iran and Ukraine, is being run by special envoys rather than career diplomats. Van Buren argues that State's response has been to hold rallies with Democratic congressmembers, plant sympathetic press pieces, and complain about new performance evaluations, without offering specifics on what results the department actually delivers. He traces the estrangement back to the first Trump term, when Foreign Service officers slow-walked Secretary Rex Tillerson, leaked internal memos to the Washington Post, and played starring roles in the Ukraine impeachment hearings. Van Buren's argument is that institutions survive only when elected leaders believe they advance policy rather than resist it, and that State's real challenge is not rebuilding its workforce but rebuilding the trust of the government it is supposed to serve. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.