Threat Diplomacy and the Iran War

Trump's war in Iran wasn't supposed to be a war — Netanyahu sold it to him as a quick win, a four-step plan with a popular uprising baked in. Rubio called it bullshit. The CIA warned it wouldn't work. They did it anyway. Now we have no allied support, no congressional authorization, threats against civilian infrastructure that would constitute war crimes under the Geneva Convention, and a 6 p.m. deadline delivered like a mob ultimatum. Hailey and Michelle break down how we got here, what it means for American credibility abroad, and why the only Republicans speaking up are Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, and — somehow — Marjorie Taylor Greene. Then there's the price tag the rest of us are paying: gas hitting $9 in California, the Strait of Hormuz closure rippling through supply chains, and a job market that's the worst for young people since 2008. The SAVE Act could make voting even harder for the 30 million Americans already struggling to access the ballot — which, as Michelle puts it, is the only way they stay in power. And Congress, for the most part, is just letting it happen. They also get into: JD Vance campaigning for Orban, Gen Z's Catholic aesthetic moment and whether it's actually a political pipeline, the dying third-space culture driving young people toward gyms and churches, MIT's study on ChatGPT making people believe things that aren't true, OpenAI's IPO drama, and why Hailey's extended family already switched to Claude. Plus: should we just put AskRuth in charge?