June 20, 2026

Good morning! Today is Saturday, June 20th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Jon Schweppe urges MAGA "Panicans" to trust the plan after the Supreme Court struck down Trump's IEEPA tariffs, arguing the administration's pivot to Section 301 authority puts the trade agenda on firmer legal ground. Ted Snider examines how the UAE swung from joining Israeli and U.S. strikes on Iran to quietly releasing billions in frozen Iranian assets, potentially greasing the wheels of a broader peace deal. As Trump winds down the Iran War with a sixty-day negotiating window, hawks are already trashing the emerging "Vance deal" while Tehran has walked away from Friday's Geneva talks over Israel's continued bombardment of Lebanon. and now for the details. We begin this morning with the political fallout from President Trump's decision to wind down the Iran War. Earlier this week in France, the president signed a memorandum of understanding that opens sixty days of negotiations toward a final agreement with Tehran. Almost immediately, the hawkish voices that had cheered the war began signaling their displeasure. Commentator Ben Shapiro told the Wall Street Journal that if the only people who like the deal are those who spent months screaming at Trump, then by definition it will be a bad deal. As W. James Antle the Third writes for The American Conservative, this is a predictable development that was predicted. Antle notes that the loudest media voices urging Trump into the conflict were never likely to stand with him when he chose to cut his losses. He observes that Democrats won't sell the deal, Senator Lindsey Graham is unlikely to, and the talk radio hawks won't either. Instead, Vice President J.D. Vance has stepped forward more prominently than Secretary of State Marco Rubio to defend the administration's diplomacy, with critics already labeling it the "Vance deal" ahead of the 2028 primaries. Antle argues Trump was never going to tolerate an Iraq-style quagmire, and once the war began fueling inflation rather than toppling the regime, the president moved to end it. The open questions, Antle writes, are whether Trump will hold firm against Republican members of Congress who may savage the deal, and whether restraint-minded allies will set aside hurt feelings to support the objective of ending the war. That fragile peace process faced its first major test on day one hundred and twelve of the Iran War. Tehran withdrew from talks scheduled for Friday in Switzerland, citing Israel's ongoing bombardment and occupation of Lebanon as incompatible with the memorandum Trump signed earlier in the week. That agreement conditions an end to the conflict on the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon, and on protecting Lebanese sovereignty. As Harrison Berger reports, Israeli airstrikes from midnight into Friday morning killed at least forty-seven people, according to Lebanon's health ministry. Berger documents that Israel has bombed or demolished homes in Lebanon every day since March second, killing nearly four thousand people. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir posted to X that "All of Lebanon must burn," prompting Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to respond that this was not the rant of a random lunatic but a public statement from a sitting Israeli minister. A U.S. official claimed Hezbollah and Israel had agreed to a ceasefire beginning Friday morning Eastern Time, though Berger notes that, citing Haaretz and Lebanese media, Israeli strikes continued after the truce was said to have taken effect. Brent Crude closed Thursday at just under eighty dollars a barrel, and the national average price of regular gasoline stood at three dollars and ninety-seven cents. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.