The American Conservative Morning Briefing

Good morning! Today is Tuesday, September 15th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. President Trump's recent broadsides against British sovereignty over the Falklands and Northern Ireland have alienated even his staunchest allies on the British right, with Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch, and Rupert Lowe all publicly breaking with him. Charlie Nash argues there is a profound irony in a supposedly nationalist administration failing to understand the nationalism of its closest ally, risking permanent damage to a partnership no transactional alliance can replace. On day 199 of the Iran War, Trump floated a permanent American claim on Iranian oil while signaling openness to negotiations, as Brent crude opened at 108 dollars a barrel and diesel hit a record 6 dollars and 23 cents per gallon. and now for the details. We begin this morning across the Atlantic, where the special relationship between Britain and the United States is under significant strain. In recent weeks, President Trump has issued a series of statements that have alienated even his staunchest British allies. The president suggested the United States would not necessarily come to Britain's aid should Argentina again move on the Falkland Islands, a remark that emboldened Argentine President Javier Milei to escalate Buenos Aires's sovereignty campaign and threaten sanctions against companies operating in the islands. Days later, Trump said he would like to see Northern Ireland severed from the United Kingdom and unified with the Republic of Ireland, calling it something that would be, in his words, a great feather in everybody's cap. The response from Britain's right was swift. Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe called the remarks unacceptable and insulting. Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch declared the Falklands British regardless of what Trump says. Reform UK's Nigel Farage, who campaigned onstage for Trump in both 2016 and 2020, publicly broke with the president, saying the people of Northern Ireland neither want a referendum nor unification. Tensions rose further after reports that the Trump administration used U.S. Marines to remove an alleged pedophile diplomat from the London embassy, and news that Washington plans to sell Black Hawk helicopters to Argentina. As Charlie Nash writes in The American Conservative, there is a profound irony in a supposedly nationalist administration failing to understand the nationalism of its closest ally. Nash argues that just as Britain is rediscovering the importance of national sovereignty, the Trump administration risks permanent damage to a partnership that no transactional alliance can replace, a relationship rooted in shared institutions, language, military tradition, and cultural inheritance. Turning to the Iran War, now in its 199th day. President Trump told reporters during his visit to Ireland on Sunday that the United States would consider a permanent interest in Iran's oil industry. In his words, we'll ultimately get out unless we decide to stay and keep the oil, like Venezuela. The president again predicted the war would wind down after the American midterm elections, at which point, he said, oil prices would come tumbling down. Trump also reiterated that he would not intervene in the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Yemen's Houthis, who made significant territorial gains against the internationally recognized Yemeni government last week, increasing their ability to threaten Red Sea shipping. On Tuesday morning, Trump said in a social media post that he was open to the concept of negotiating with what he called the failing Nation of Iran. Meanwhile, a planned meeting on the future of the Strait of Hormuz between the Gulf nations and Iran was postponed. Jude Russo reports that Brent crude opened Monday at 108 dollars per barrel, with AAA reporting a national average of 4 dollars and 32 cents for regular gasoline, and a new all-time record of 6 dollars and 23 cents per gallon of diesel. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Monday, September 14th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. On day 198 of the Iran war, Xi Jinping offers Beijing's "due role" in Middle East peace at the BRICS summit, even as U.S. officials accuse Chinese entities of feeding Tehran satellite imagery used in a deadly strike on American troops in Jordan. A vessel struck in the Strait of Hormuz and today's Iran-Gulf talks in Oman underscore how fragile the world's most vital energy chokepoint has become ahead of the September 24 Trump-Xi meeting. From a Copenhagen coffee shop, Peter Van Buren contrasts the ghoulish arithmetic of American retirement with a Danish system whose modestly higher taxes buy something Americans rarely know: the absence of constant financial fear. and now for the details. We begin with the ongoing war with Iran, now in its 198th day, and growing signs that China is drawing closer to the conflict. Speaking at the BRICS summit in New Delhi over the weekend, Chinese President Xi Jinping said Beijing is willing to play what he called its "due role" in helping bring peace to the Middle East, warning that the war has caused serious losses across the region. Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian and Russia's Vladimir Putin were also in attendance, with the eleven-country bloc issuing a joint statement urging restraint and criticizing sanctions not authorized by the United Nations. But as Andrew Day reports, Washington is also seeing fresh evidence that Beijing has been quietly assisting Iran's war effort. Citing U.S. officials, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Chinese entities provided Tehran with high-resolution satellite imagery of an American Air Force base in Jordan ahead of a deadly attack that killed three American troops and wounded four more. Beijing denies the allegation. The revelations come just ahead of a scheduled White House meeting between Xi and President Trump on September 24. Meanwhile, an Iranian commercial vessel was struck in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday, leaving one dead and four wounded. Iran and Gulf states are set to meet in Oman today to discuss the strait, a chokepoint for global energy trade that Tehran effectively closed at the outset of the war. Turning to matters closer to the American kitchen table, a dispatch from Copenhagen raises hard questions about the anxieties that shadow ordinary American life. Peter Van Buren writes from a Danish coffee shop, where he found himself calculating whether his retirement savings would outlast him, weighing nursing home costs, inflation, and the solvency of Social Security and Medicare. Looking around the room, he realized none of the Danes near him carried that same weight. Every Dane, he notes, receives universal healthcare, free public schools and universities, pensions, generous unemployment insurance, subsidized child care, and near cost-free elder care. Van Buren describes trying to explain the American healthcare maze, with its HMOs, PPOs, deductibles, IRMAA surcharges, and Medicare Parts A through D, to Danes who laughed in disbelief. He walks through the ghoulish calculations Americans make about when to claim Social Security or whether to leave a pension for a surviving spouse. According to OECD figures Van Buren cites, the average American tax wedge sits at about 30 percent; the Danish figure is 36 percent, but in exchange Danes receive comprehensive benefits and five or more weeks of paid vacation. Van Buren's argument is not a call to import Scandinavia wholesale, but a challenge to a system that, he writes, places so much emphasis on making the right private choices or personally suffering the consequences, while delivering comparatively little for what Americans already pay. What he envied in Copenhagen, he concludes, was not the architecture or the bicycles, but the absence of constant financial fear. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Sunday, September 13th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Amid record-low approval for President Trump's foreign policy, Luke Nicastro argues the administration has quietly succeeded in the Indo-Pacific, pursuing strategic stability with China through realism, rapprochement, and Elbridge Colby's balance of denial defense and active diplomacy. As the Iran War enters its 197th day, Trump has rebuffed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's push for strikes on the Houthis, even as the Iran-backed group seizes strategic territory near the Bab al-Mandab Strait and gasoline prices climb to $4.31 a gallon. and now for the details. We begin with a look at one bright spot in an otherwise troubled foreign policy landscape. A Quinnipiac poll released last week found just 33 percent of Americans approve of President Trump's handling of foreign affairs, the worst figure of either term. More than six months of war with Iran, a spiraling trade fight with Canada, ongoing bloodshed in Ukraine, and a hardening posture in Latin America have all taken their toll. But writing for The American Conservative, Luke Nicastro argues there is one region where the administration has quietly succeeded, and that is the Indo-Pacific. Nicastro reports that the White House is pursuing what its National Defense Strategy calls a "decent peace" with China, deemphasizing security provocations, expanding military-to-military dialogue, and shifting the frame of the relationship toward economics. He credits Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby, a committed realist, with balancing diplomatic engagement against a strong denial defense along the first island chain. Jennifer Kavanagh of Defense Priorities told Nicastro that Trump has made "very positive moves" by prioritizing stability over confrontation. A tariff truce is holding, and Xi Jinping is expected to visit the United States later this month. Not everyone is satisfied. The New York Times editorial board has accused the president of going wobbly. And analysts Nicastro spoke with warn that 80,000 U.S. troops near China's shores may still preclude lasting stability, and that a future administration may reverse course on Taiwan. Still, Nicastro concludes, the approach marks a dramatic improvement, rooted in Trump's willingness to treat Beijing as a geopolitical peer with legitimate interests. Turning to the Middle East, the Iran War has entered its 197th day. Andrew Day reports that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in two phone calls Thursday, urged President Trump to launch strikes against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. According to Axios, Trump declined, though the commander of U.S. Central Command traveled to Saudi Arabia for meetings. Speaking to reporters Saturday, Trump said the Houthis "called us, and they don't want to fight with us," and offered assurances that things will "work out fine and dandy." The stakes on the ground are rising. Day reports that the Houthis have seized strategic territory near the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a critical chokepoint for global trade and energy. With Iran already restricting traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, Houthi control of the Bab al-Mandab would give Tehran additional leverage. The Saudi Energy Ministry has also shut down its East-West oil pipeline after drone attacks launched from Iraq. Gulf Arab states are set to meet with Iran in Oman on Monday to discuss the Hormuz situation. Meanwhile, in a September 11th commemoration ceremony, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth linked the terror attacks to the ongoing war, vowing that "we will finish this fight." The cost at home is measurable at the pump. The average price of gasoline in America stood at $4.31 per gallon Saturday, up from $2.98 before the war began. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Saturday, September 12th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Houthi forces seized Perim Island and the port of Mokha, giving the Iran-aligned militia effective control of Yemen's entire Red Sea coastline as the war with Iran enters its 196th day. U.S. diesel prices hit a record $6.06 a gallon and August inflation climbed to 3.4 percent, with energy costs from the Iran war rippling through farms, freight, and the Fed's next rate decision. Jude Russo argues a congressional commission on the Iran war could give both parties political cover to reopen the question of executive war powers and revive constitutional government. and now for the details. We begin with the war against Iran, now in its one hundred and ninety-sixth day. Yemen's Houthi rebels seized Perim Island in the Red Sea on Friday, expanding their control over the Bab el-Mandeb strait. That capture came a day after the Iran-aligned militia took the port city of Mokha from forces loyal to Yemen's internationally recognized government. According to reporting compiled by Luke Nicastro, the Houthis now hold functional control over Yemen's entire Red Sea coastline, raising fears they could throttle shipping through the waterway and drive oil prices higher still. The advance poses particular problems for Saudi Arabia, which exports much of its oil through the Red Sea. The Houthis have also struck Saudi oil infrastructure in recent days, including possible strikes that shut down the Kingdom's East-West pipeline on Friday. CNN reported that more than 100 U.S. military advisors are on the ground in Saudi Arabia providing intelligence and targeting support. Iran, for its part, called Friday for an end to the Saudi blockade of Houthi-held areas and a return to negotiations. Elsewhere, Israel demolished what it called a large Hezbollah facility in southern Lebanon, triggering a 4.1 magnitude earthquake. At home, President Trump attended a ceremony at the Pentagon marking the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and directly tied those attacks to the current war with Iran. Nicastro also notes that the New York Times reported Vice President J.D. Vance has independently sought out military commanders' unvarnished assessments of the war's goals, tactics, and likely trajectory. Brent crude closed Friday just above $100 a barrel. The costs of that war are showing up at the pump. U.S. diesel prices hit a record high Friday, reaching $6.06 a gallon, according to the motorist group AAA. That's up from $5.98 a day earlier and $5.85 a week ago. As Spencer Neale reports, the Iran war is the biggest factor in the surge, as crude oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains limited. Energy analyst Rory Johnston told the Financial Times, quote, "This has been not a spike but a sustained grind higher. We don't really have anywhere near enough diesel on the market." Farmers and the broader agriculture sector are feeling the brunt of the increase—diesel powers combines, tractors, and irrigation equipment. Delivery-dependent businesses are also passing higher freight costs on to consumers. Speaking at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas on Wednesday, President Trump argued the pain is worth it, saying oil "will be going down as soon as we win the war with Iran." Those energy costs are bleeding through into the broader inflation picture. Spencer Neale also reports that the Consumer Price Index rose 0.4 percent in August, putting annual inflation at 3.4 percent, according to new figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Core prices, stripping out food and energy, rose 0.3 percent. Gasoline prices surged 3.9 percent for the month and accounted for more than a third of the overall increase, while the broader energy index climbed 2.1 percent as the Iran war continues to roil markets. Grocery prices held largely flat, and shelter costs rose 0.3 percent. The report is the last major inflation reading the Federal Reserve will see before its policy meeting next week, where officials will weigh whether to raise interest rates for the first time in three years. Despite the uncertainty, the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq all opened higher on Friday. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Friday, September 11th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. On day 195 of the Iran War, Trump promises the fighting ends after the midterms while his own top advisors privately warn it could drag past Inauguration Day, even as Iranian strikes damage American aircraft in Jordan and the Houthis seize a strategic Red Sea port. At the first-ever midterm convention, Trump dangles a five-thousand-dollar dividend to voters, but Jude Russo argues the showmanship can't mask rising prices, tightening credit, and a president who may already sense the majority slipping away. Andrew Day reports from Germany, where the AfD's forty-four percent landslide in Saxony-Anhalt has shattered the postwar taboo that long capped the right, exposing a liberal establishment increasingly reliant on surveillance and coalition blockades to hold back the popular will. and now for the details. We begin with day one hundred ninety-five of the Iran War. President Trump told reporters Wednesday that the conflict will end right after November's midterm elections, saying the Iranians, quote, can't hold out any longer. He repeated the claim at the Republican convention in Dallas, arguing Tehran is hanging on hoping Democrats prevail. But on the same day, the Wall Street Journal reported that Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and other senior officials have warned the president privately that the war could drag on through the rest of his term, potentially past Inauguration Day in January 2029. As Luke Nicastro reports for The American Conservative, Iran's Tuesday strike on a U.S. airbase in Jordan appears to have damaged aircraft and possibly injured American troops. Officials confirmed no fatalities, but said some servicemembers may have suffered traumatic brain injuries. One A-10 reportedly had a wing blown off, and eight F-15s sustained lighter damage. Meanwhile, Yemen's Houthi militia has captured the strategic Red Sea port of Mokha, a development that could strengthen their ability to threaten energy shipments through the Bab el-Mandeb waterway. The average price of regular gasoline in the United States now stands at four dollars and twenty-eight cents a gallon. President Trump took the stage Wednesday night in Dallas at the first-ever midterm convention held by either major party. He was, by all accounts, in fine form: discursive, wisecracking, and good-humored. The centerpiece of the speech was a promise of a five thousand dollar Trump dividend for every American adult, should Republicans win both chambers in November. Jude Russo, writing for The American Conservative, argues the performance was a refreshing return to classic Trump, but raises harder questions beneath the showmanship. Russo notes that Trump leaned on real Republican strengths, the stock market, border enforcement, Democratic disarray on identity politics, but struggled to paper over serious headwinds. Selling the Iran War after Americans are already feeling the economic pain is difficult rhetoric. Mocking Democratic appeals to affordability rings hollow when prices are still rising and credit is tightening. As for the five thousand dollar dividend, Russo observes that such a payout would be stupendously expensive at a moment when Treasury yields are climbing into rarefied territory. The only reason to make such a promise, he suggests, is if you don't really expect to have to deliver on it. Russo's conclusion: Trump himself seemed to know Wednesday night that the midterms may already be slipping away, and chose instead to enjoy the adulation of the crowd. To Germany now, where the Alternative for Germany party, the AfD, has won a stunning victory in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, taking forty-four percent of the vote. The center-right Christian Democrats finished a distant second at seventeen percent. Andrew Day, reporting for The American Conservative, spoke with Filip Gaspar, a political advisor and AfD member, who called it the most significant German election since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Day argues the result marks a genuine breakdown of postwar liberal mythology. For decades, invoking the memory of National Socialism has functioned as a ceiling on right-wing support in Germany. That ceiling appears to be cracking. Day notes the German domestic intelligence agency last year designated the AfD a right-wing extremist party, enabling surveillance and the placement of informants. Since then, the AfD has only grown more popular, becoming the leading party nationally. Chancellor Friedrich Merz reiterated on the eve of the vote that his CDU would never form a coalition with the AfD, invoking Germany's historical responsibility and denouncing the party's remigration policy as ethnic cleansing. Day's argument is that opposition to mass migration, not economic anxiety, is the true engine of the European right, and that voters in the former East, long accustomed to state-imposed ideology, are pr

Good morning! Today is Thursday, September 10th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. In Germany, the AfD's landslide 44 percent victory in Saxony-Anhalt has thrown Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democrats into crisis, with Phillip Linderman arguing the surge reflects the simple fact that Germany no longer has an authentically conservative party. As European capitals warn of Russian hybrid attacks on NATO soil and pundits urge tougher retaliation, Doug Bandow argues that deepening allied involvement in Ukraine would only push Putin to escalate, and that putting America first means steering clear of a wider war with Russia. and now for the details. We begin in Germany, where Sunday's state election in Saxony-Anhalt has delivered a political earthquake. The Alternative for Germany, or AfD, took a commanding 44 percent of the vote, doubling its share since Chancellor Friedrich Merz took office in 2025. The result has thrown Merz's Christian Democrats into crisis. Merz once boasted he would cut AfD support in half. Instead, it has surged, powered by voter concern over immigration, the economy, and education. Top campaign issues included the country's asylum system, the imposition of gender-identity curricula in state schools, and taxpayer funding for NGOs and public broadcasters. Writing for The American Conservative, Phillip Linderman argues that the AfD's rise is not, as Berlin elites claim, a sinister echo of Germany's authoritarian past. Rather, Linderman says, it reflects the simple fact that Germany no longer has an authentically conservative party. The CDU, he writes, has slow-walked its own supporters into a coalition with the Social Democrats, ratifying left-wing policies on energy, climate, taxation, and borders. Linderman highlights the AfD's rising star in Saxony-Anhalt, 35-year-old Ulrich Siegmund, whom he compares to a young Bill Clinton for his retail political skills. Because of Germany's coalition rules and the so-called firewall against the AfD, Siegmund may still be shut out of governing—but Linderman argues the results are likely to rock the federal system, and that this is a healthy and necessary development for both Germany and Europe. Turning to the war in Ukraine, European capitals are increasingly warning that the conflict is spilling over onto NATO territory. Germany has blamed Russia for last month's drone attack on Leipzig Airport, and the Financial Times describes it as a wake-up call about Moscow's hybrid campaign against Europe. The Washington Post's David Ignatius has called for a joint U.S.–European warning to Moscow, and even proposed that Washington and Europe quietly help Ukraine carry out proportional attacks inside Russia. Writing for The American Conservative, Doug Bandow argues that such an approach would make matters far worse. Bandow traces Vladimir Putin's evolution from a leader who once addressed the Bundestag about closer ties with Europe to a wartime president responding to what he views as an existential proxy war on Russia's border. Bandow does not excuse Moscow's invasion, which he calls criminal and unjustified. But he contends that Western policymakers have little moral standing to lecture, citing the Iraq War, the U.S.-backed Saudi campaign in Yemen, and the Trump administration's recent strikes on Iran. Bandow warns that escalating allied involvement will push Putin, under pressure from Russian hardliners, to double down rather than retreat. Putting America first, he concludes, means avoiding a wider war with Russia over Ukraine, and pressing European allies to step back from a proxy conflict that grows more dangerous by the week. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Wednesday, September 9th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Joseph Addington warns that Trump's sweeping Venezuelan oil deal, which hands Washington functional control of 65 billion barrels through a single shady middleman, is a flashy gamble that could delegitimize the Rodriguez government and hand a future Venezuelan nationalist a ready-made grievance. Eldar Mamedov argues that Vice President Vance's dismissal of Iran's leaders as "crazy people" is a strategic dead end, pointing to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei's subtle rebuke of hardliners as evidence Tehran's pragmatists remain open to diplomacy. Mamedov urges Vance to use the coming UN General Assembly to build a regional security framework with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, and Gulf mediators rather than pressing an open-ended war. and now for the details. We begin in Caracas, where President Trump's late-August deal with the government of Venezuela is drawing scrutiny. Under the agreement, the United States, acting through the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital, will take a thirty-five percent stake in a corporation called North American Blue Energy Partners, controlled by Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt. Washington will gain veto power over board appointments, a guaranteed twenty percent of production from seventeen oil fields, and the right of first refusal on the rest. All told, that amounts to functional control of about sixty-five billion barrels of crude—roughly one and a half times America's own proven reserves. The White House says the deal will refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and shore up energy security. Writing for The American Conservative, Joseph Addington calls it a big gamble dressed up as a foreign policy triumph. Addington argues the flashy, sweeping nature of the deal is precisely the problem. By transferring a major share of Venezuela's natural resources directly to a foreign government, Washington almost certainly weakens the Rodriguez government it has chosen to prop up, and hands a future Venezuelan nationalist—perhaps the next Hugo Chavez—a ready-made grievance. Addington also raises concerns about Betancourt himself, a so-called "Bolívar Boy" dogged for years by allegations of bribery, corruption, and money laundering, whom the administration has now effectively installed as the head of a quasi-governmental oil enterprise. Addington notes none of this risk was necessary. A series of smaller, diversified partnerships could have delivered comparable benefits without staking American credibility on one man and one megadeal. Turning to the ongoing war with Iran, Vice President J.D. Vance recently urged Tehran to "stop acting like crazy people," and claimed the United States does not target civilians. Those remarks come against the backdrop of credible reports of American strikes on a wedding party in Sirik County and on a girls' elementary school in Minab earlier this year. Writing for The American Conservative, Eldar Mamedov argues that dismissing Iran's leadership as irrational is a strategic dead end. Mamedov points to a recent message from Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, carried by the IRGC-linked Tasnim agency, which criticized the false choice between war and negotiation and publicly praised moderate President Masoud Pezeshkian. That, Mamedov writes, is a subtle rebuke of hardline voices like the editor of Kayhan newspaper, and a signal that Tehran's top leadership remains open to pragmatic solutions. From Iran's perspective, Mamedov notes, the tougher line since the collapse of the Islamabad Memorandum reflects a rational response to unmet American promises on sanctions relief. Mamedov urges Vance to use the upcoming UN General Assembly to engage regional stakeholders—including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, Qatar, Oman, and the UAE—and, if possible, Iran itself, in pursuit of a durable regional security framework rather than an open-ended war. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Monday, September 7th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Emily Jashinsky examines how Christian conservatives, from Tucker Carlson to Catholic thinkers at First Things and Public Discourse, are breaking with the interventionist consensus and applying Just War criteria to Operation Epic Fury. Iran's parliament speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf warns that Tehran's era of proportionate responses is over after U.S. strikes crippled three Iranian oil tankers, while Israeli strikes hit southern Lebanon and Gaza. Energy Secretary Chris Wright concedes a nuclear deal with Iran may have to wait for the next government, as gas prices climb to 4 dollars and 15 cents a gallon on day 191 of the war. and now for the details. We begin this morning with a look at how Christian conservatives are increasingly breaking with the interventionist consensus, particularly over the ongoing war with Iran. Tucker Carlson has repeatedly returned to the moral question of nuclear weapons, arguing on Joe Rogan's program and again this August that it is simply wrong to drop atomic bombs on people. After President Trump's Easter Sunday threat to Iran, Carlson warned that desecrating Easter was, in his words, the first step toward nuclear war. Joe Kent, a practicing Catholic, resigned as counterterrorism director with an open letter urging the president to reflect on what the United States is doing in Iran, and for whom. As Emily Jashinsky reports, this represents a significant fracture in a movement whose postwar identity was forged in the shadow of Hiroshima and the Cold War struggle against Bolshevism. Jashinsky traces how domino theory once justified interventions from Iran in 1953 to Vietnam and Central America, and how Christian thinkers including Senator Robert Taft and even Billy Graham warned against the moral costs of that posture. Today, in publications like First Things and Public Discourse, writers such as R.R. Reno and Edward Feser are applying Just War criteria to Operation Epic Fury and finding it wanting. Reno argues the strikes are likely to accomplish nothing lasting; Feser contends that preventive war falls outside the natural law tradition altogether. Jashinsky concludes that after Vietnam, Afghanistan, and now Iran, Taft's warnings about global hatred and equal justice under law are finding a new audience among exhausted Christian conservatives. Turning to the war itself, now in its 191st day. Mohammad Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran's parliament, warned Sunday that Tehran's era of proportionate responses is over, promising faster, more intense, and more painful retaliation following U.S. strikes that appeared to cripple three Iranian oil tankers on Saturday. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed to have struck several U.S.-affiliated vessels, including what it described as a successful hit on a U.S. Navy drone, though a Pentagon spokesman denied that account. Elsewhere in the region, Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon reportedly killed at least seven and wounded twenty, while a strike in Gaza left two dead, including a six-year-old girl. Here at home, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told ABC News that a nuclear agreement with Iran may never materialize, saying any deal may simply have to await the next Iranian government. As Luke Nicastro reports in TAC's daily war tracker, triple A put the national average price of gasoline at four dollars and fifteen cents per gallon. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Sunday, September 6th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. U.S. envoys Witkoff and Kushner met with Putin in Moscow for three hours on Ukraine, with the Kremlin striking a positive tone as the pair prepare to head to Kiev. On day 190 of the Iran War, Trump dismissed the conflict as "small potatoes" while CENTCOM destroyed three Iranian tankers and the Pentagon polygraphed dozens over leaks. Fraser Myers argues the "Burnham Bounce" is real but fragile, propped up by progressive returnees to Labour while a fractured right and an unaddressed migration crisis loom. and now for the details. We begin in Moscow, where U.S. special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner sat down with Russian president Vladimir Putin on Saturday for more than three hours of talks on the war in Ukraine. No breakthrough appears to have emerged, though the Kremlin and Russian state media described the meeting in positive terms. Putin remarked that "whatever happens, such contacts are undoubtedly always useful," and a Russian envoy called it an "important peacemaking visit." The White House has yet to comment on the outcome, though President Trump said Friday that his envoys were bringing with them a proposal to end the war. Witkoff and Kushner are expected to travel on to Kiev on Sunday for talks with Ukrainian representatives—their first visit to the Ukrainian capital, though they have been to Moscow several times before. Ahead of the U.S. envoys' arrival, Putin declared a 72-hour pause on Russian attacks against Kiev, though not against other parts of the country. As Luke Nicastro reports, the visit—coming on the heels of an unusual trip to Moscow last week by CIA director John Ratcliffe—suggests the Trump administration is renewing its push to broker a ceasefire after months of relative diplomatic stasis. The Iran War has now entered its 190th day. In an exchange with reporters on Friday, President Trump sought to downplay the costs of the conflict, telling reporters, "A lot of people don't call it a war. I call it a military conflict because it's small potatoes for us. It's not a big thing." The president also indicated the U.S. may soon strike Pickaxe Mountain, a heavily fortified underground site believed to play a central role in Iran's nuclear program. On Saturday, U.S. Central Command announced it had destroyed three Iranian tankers off Kharg Island in retaliation for an unsuccessful Iranian ballistic missile attempt on two American warships. Fighting also escalated in Yemen, where clashes between the Houthis and Yemen's internationally recognized government reportedly left more than 60 dead. Here at home, Luke Nicastro relays reporting from the New York Times that the Pentagon is aggressively hunting leakers to stem press coverage of munitions shortages. The Defense Department reportedly administered polygraphs to roughly 50 members of the military's Joint Staff in August, in what sources described as an effort not only to identify leakers but to intimidate others who might come forward. And triple A reported the average price of gasoline in the United States stood at 4 dollars and 15 cents per gallon on Saturday. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Saturday, September 5th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Newly surfaced testimony from former counterterrorism chief Joe Kent confirms that the New Year's Day 2025 Bourbon Street attacker explicitly cited Gaza and U.S. support for Israel, raising questions about why federal officials publicly described him only as ISIS-inspired. Vice President Vance declines to call the 189-day Iran conflict a war even as CENTCOM investigates a deadly strike on a residential area and Netanyahu tells the IDF that regime change in Tehran is within reach. American households are absorbing the costs of the Iran conflict, with diesel hitting a record 5 dollars and 85 cents a gallon and Brent crude near 90 dollars a barrel. and now for the details. We begin this morning with new reporting on the deadly New Year's Day 2025 attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, where an American-born Army veteran named Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove a rented pickup truck into a crowd of revelers, killing fourteen people and injuring more than fifty before being shot dead by police. From the beginning, federal investigators told the public that Jabbar had been radicalized by ISIS, but stayed conspicuously silent about what, exactly, drove him to act when he did. Writing in The American Conservative, Scott Horton and John Weeks report that the missing piece has now been confirmed on the record. Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told the Scott Horton Show in August that he had personally viewed portions of the videos Jabbar recorded on his drive from Houston to New Orleans. According to Kent, Jabbar explicitly cited Gaza and American support for Israel's war there as central grievances motivating the attack. Horton and Weeks argue this raises serious questions about a coverup. The FBI, the Justice Department, and the Biden White House had access to those videos within a day of the attack. Yet in press conferences and public statements, officials described Jabbar only as ISIS-inspired, never mentioning Gaza. The authors note that senior intelligence officials, including former FBI Director Christopher Wray and former DNI Avril Haines, had warned publicly that the war in Gaza was likely to fuel a generation of terrorism against Western targets. Horton and Weeks place the Bourbon Street attack in a long lineage of what they call blowback terrorism, from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing through the September 11th attacks and on to more recent incidents, including the May 2025 shooting outside a Jewish museum in Washington, the June attack at a pro-Israel rally in Boulder, and the March 2026 attack in Austin, Texas, following the U.S. strikes on Iran. Their conclusion is direct: American support for Israel's conduct in Gaza and its regional wars is producing violence against ordinary Americans at home, and the public is not being told the truth about why. Turning to the ongoing conflict with Iran, now in its one hundred and eighty-ninth day. At a Thursday press conference, Vice President J.D. Vance declined to describe the confrontation as a war, telling reporters that despite multiple exchanges with Iranian forces this week, the United States is no longer conducting what he called major combat operations. Vance said he could not predict when the conflict would end, and expressed skepticism about reports that a U.S. strike on a residential area Tuesday had killed civilians, though he acknowledged the claims are under review. U.S. Central Command has separately confirmed it is investigating the incident. In Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the IDF general staff that Israel continues to pursue regime change in Tehran, saying the toppling of the Iranian government is, in his words, close and within reach. Luke Nicastro reports for The American Conservative that the economic costs of the conflict are landing squarely on American households. U.S. diesel prices hit a record high of five dollars and eighty-five cents per gallon on Friday. Because diesel powers freight and delivery, sustained price spikes tend to push inflation across the broader economy. Brent crude was trading near ninety dollars a barrel Friday morning, and triple A pegs the average price of gasoline in the United States at four dollars and fifteen cents. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Friday, September 4th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Day one hundred and eighty-eight of the Iran War brings fresh Iranian strikes on U.S. assets in Kuwait and the UAE, a reported American bombing of an Iranian wedding party, and gas prices at four dollars and fourteen cents a gallon. J.D. Vance takes the White House podium for the first time since Karoline Leavitt's exit, dodging questions on when the war ends, refusing to disown Tucker Carlson, and asking Americans for patience on the economy. Ted Snider dissects Trump's self-proclaimed "biggest oil deal in world history" in Venezuela, arguing the Pentagon's seizure of sixty-five billion barrels amounts to plunder that will neither lower pump prices soon nor survive Venezuela's own constitution. and now for the details. We begin with the Iran War, now in its one hundred and eighty-eighth day. Iran launched fresh retaliatory strikes on Thursday, targeting American assets in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, in open defiance of President Trump's warning that any retaliation would be met with, in his words, an attack that would leave very little of the Islamic Republic remaining. The new strikes extend a tit-for-tat cycle that resumed Sunday night, when U.S. forces hit targets on Iran's Larak Island, breaking a month-long pause. Tehran said it was responding to what it called America's crimes against the Iranian people. As Andrew Day reports for The American Conservative, U.S. forces were responsible for a deadly bombing of a wedding party in southern Iran on Tuesday, according to a New York Times analysis. A six-year-old boy and at least four others were reported killed. Day notes conflicting signals from Washington on how long the war will last. The Wall Street Journal reports that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is quietly extending troop deployments, suggesting the conflict could drag into next year, even as Trump privately tells senior aides he favors declaring the war over. Reuters reports that aides are urging the president to keep the conflict contained through the November third midterms, with the White House prepared to escalate afterward. The war is already biting Americans at the pump. Brent crude was trading near ninety-seven dollars a barrel Thursday, and the average U.S. gasoline price stood at four dollars and fourteen cents, up from two dollars and ninety-eight cents on the eve of the war. At the White House, Vice President J.D. Vance led the first press briefing since Karoline Leavitt's departure as press secretary. As Luke Nicastro reports, Vance was asked whether the Iran War would end before the midterms, and he conceded he did not know the answer, adding that reporters would have to ask the Iranians. Vance also disputed the characterization of the conflict as a war, saying that right now there is no active shooting. Pressed on his relationship with commentator Tucker Carlson, who has been sharply critical of the administration's Middle East policy, Vance declined to distance himself. He called Carlson a friend, saying he would not throw friends under the bus over political disagreements, and adding that doing so would be a terrible place for the United States to go. On the economy, Vance defended the administration's affordability record, arguing that America's inflation problem was not created in a day and that rebuilding the foundation of the middle-class economy would take time. Turning to the Western Hemisphere. President Trump announced last week what he called the biggest oil deal in world history, securing majority U.S. control of more than sixty-five billion barrels of proven oil reserves in Venezuela. The deal follows the American raid on Venezuela and the removal of its president in January, after which Washington effectively took control of the country's oil industry. Under the arrangement, the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital takes a thirty-five percent stake in a company run by Venezuelan oilman Alejandro Betancourt López, who is currently under investigation in Switzerland and Spain for money laundering and tax fraud. The U.S. is guaranteed twenty percent of the oil at production cost, first refusal on the rest, and veto power over the company's board. As Ted Snider writes for The American Conservative, the administration is selling this as relief for American drivers, with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at its lowest level since 1982. But Snider cites Miguel Tinker Salas of Pomona College, who says the only immediate output would come from mature fields still requiring millions in fresh investment, while other fields would take billions and years to produce. Economist Francisco Rodríguez calculates that the promised tax revenues amount to just three dollars and twenty-two cents per barrel, less than five percent of the current price. Snider also notes that Venezuela's constitution treats oil resources as the inalienable public domain, raising legal questions

Good morning! Today is Thursday, September 3rd 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. With Democrats poised to potentially flip the Senate this November, one man could hold their razor-thin majority hostage: Pennsylvania's John Fetterman, whose fervent backing of Israel and Trump's Iran war has already sunk his party's war powers resolutions at least a dozen times. U.S. Central Command struck Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targets along the Strait of Hormuz as the Iran war entered its 187th day, with Trump dismissing negotiations and again floating regime change while Brent crude climbed to $95.25 a barrel. President Trump formally nominated Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao, a Vietnamese-born retired Navy captain and two-time failed candidate, to lead the service four months after John Phelan's ouster. and now for the details. We begin with the ongoing war with Iran, now in its 187th day. U.S. Central Command announced that American forces struck Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targets along the Strait of Hormuz late Tuesday, hitting air defense sites, radar systems, maritime assets, and communications facilities. CENTCOM said the strikes were a response to recent Iranian attempts against commercial shipping in the strait and against American service members. Iran had reportedly struck two Saudi supertankers on Monday, killing at least two people. Tehran retaliated with ballistic missiles and drones aimed at targets in Jordan, Kuwait, and Bahrain, and Iranian sources claimed the American strikes killed civilians, including at a wedding in Sirik. President Trump published a post on Truth Social Tuesday evening dismissing the idea of negotiations with Iran and again floating regime change as his desired outcome. As Jude Russo reports for The American Conservative, the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln put in at Pattaya, Thailand, after 250 days without a port call in the Persian Gulf region. Brent crude opened at $95.25 a barrel, and AAA reported a national average of $4.12 per gallon of regular gas. Turning to the midterms, now just over two months away. With President Trump's approval numbers slumping and the Iran War dragging on, polling suggests Democrats are positioned to take the House, and control of the Senate is also in play. Republican-held seats in Maine, Texas, Alaska, and Ohio all appear vulnerable, while Democrats are working to hold Michigan. If Democrats capture four of those five races, they would emerge with a 51-to-49 majority. But as Spencer Neale reports for The American Conservative, that majority may exist in name only, because of one man: Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman. Fetterman has broken sharply with his party, backing Trump's Iran war and staunchly defending Israel. He has voted against Democratic war powers resolutions at least a dozen times, single-handedly killing several. He's appeared on Fox News 56 times since the start of the year, and told NBC News in July that he'd switch parties if Democrats "officially become the anti-Israel party." A new Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Times, and Siena poll finds 73 percent of Pennsylvania Republicans view Fetterman favorably, compared to just 22 percent of Democrats. Neale writes that even if Democrats sweep the close races, they could wake up in January with a majority they cannot actually command. President Trump on Tuesday formally nominated Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao to lead the Navy, four months after the ouster of former Secretary John Phelan. In a post on Truth Social, Trump called Cao a "true warrior" and urged the Senate to confirm him swiftly. Cao, born in Saigon in 1971, served as a U.S. Navy officer with deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia before retiring as a captain in 2021. He made unsuccessful bids for the House in 2022 and the Senate in 2024, and was confirmed as Under Secretary of the Navy last spring, becoming acting Secretary in April. Spencer Neale reports that a date for Cao's confirmation hearing has not yet been set. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Wednesday, September 2nd 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Jennifer Kavanagh warns that Trump's expanding wars have pushed the U.S. military to a breaking point, with the Iran conflict alone tying down 50,000 troops and consuming a quarter of the Reaper drone fleet, forcing a strategic downsizing rather than more spending. As Trump pivots to "economic D-Day" against Iran, Middle East experts tell TAC the blockade strategy has little chance of working, will harm ordinary Iranians most, and risks a "mow the lawn" cycle of periodic strikes around the Strait of Hormuz. W. James Antle III argues Trump's self-chosen crises—the Iran war and an erratic tariff regime—are deepening the affordability squeeze and leaving his party exposed heading into the midterms. and now for the details. We begin at the Pentagon, where reports indicate that four top military commanders have raised concerns about whether they can resource their own missions while operations in Iran continue. Writing for The American Conservative, Jennifer Kavanagh argues that despite Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's promise in the 2026 National Defense Strategy to prioritize the most consequential threats, the Trump administration has done the opposite—expanding the U.S. military footprint in Latin America, starting what she calls a disastrous war in the Middle East, and remaining deeply involved in Ukraine. Kavanagh notes the Iran war alone has kept at least 50,000 U.S. service members deployed overseas, and consumed 25 percent of the U.S. fleet of MQ-9 Reaper drones, along with numerous aircraft and significant portions of the air defense network in the region. She points out that in Europe, U.S. presence remains essentially unchanged from January 2025, and intelligence and logistical assistance to Ukraine has actually increased, despite rhetoric to the contrary. Kavanagh writes that the shortfall is not just a munitions problem but a systemic erosion of American military strength that cannot be fixed by throwing more money at the industrial base. Her prescription: a strategic downsizing of missions and objectives, distinguishing between the interests of allies and those of America, and adopting a truly defensive posture. As she puts it, the United States had a one-war military, chose to fight a war with Iran, and will now face the consequences. Staying with the Iran conflict: President Trump has shifted from direct military hostilities toward what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the president himself are calling "economic D-Day"—an effort to strangle Iran's economy through sanctions and a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Andrew Day reports for TAC that Middle East experts are skeptical this approach will change Tehran's calculations. Rosemary Kelanic of Defense Priorities told TAC that Iran will keep fighting despite the economic pain, calling this an existential conflict for Tehran, and noting that capitulation is not a serious option when Trump's demands are so erratic. She gives economic D-Day, in her words, less than a snowball's chance in hell of working, since China, Russia, and Pakistan have refused to cooperate in isolating Tehran. Sina Toossi of the Center for International Policy told TAC that economic pressure can severely hurt ordinary people without producing the political outcome Washington expects. Day reports that a Pentagon source told Axios one long-term plan is to "mow the lawn" around the Strait of Hormuz—periodically bombing Iran to keep shipping lanes open. Meanwhile, testimonies from Iranian civil society shared with TAC describe impoverished children losing income after scrap warehouses were shuttered, and residents observing that the main burden falls on ordinary people, not politicians. Turning to domestic politics and the coming midterms: W. James Antle III writes for TAC that as the Iran war hits the six-month mark, President Trump continues to drive the national conversation—but to no obvious benefit for himself or his party ahead of the midterm elections. Antle argues that Trump's political skills are especially unsuited to calming the nation in a period of crisis, and that his current crises—the Iran war and an unstable, erratic tariffs regime—are largely of his own choosing, both worsening the affordability crisis. Antle observes that voters are worried about high gas prices, and that even the late Senator Lindsey Graham's own sister ran a campaign focused on affordability rather than Iran or international affairs. He credits Trump with real accomplishments achieved through brute force—securing the border, routing ISIS, cleaning up parts of Washington—but says not everything can be done that way. Antle's conclusion: Trump has chosen to be a wartime president without a vote of Congress, and both he and the country would be better off if he recognized he is not suited to the role. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanco

Good morning! Today is Tuesday, September 1st 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. On day 185 of the Persian Gulf war, the United States and Iran traded direct fire for the first time since July, sending Brent crude back above ninety dollars as gasoline at home climbs past four dollars a gallon. Jason Jones argues the fashionable warning of a "red-green" coalition is an elite pretext for dismembering the anti-war voters — including Arab Americans who helped deliver Michigan — who put Trump back in office. At Jackson Hole, new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh moved against forward guidance, blamed the central bank for 65 months of elevated inflation, and hinted at hikes that could collide with Trump's demands for cuts. and now for the details. We begin with the war in the Persian Gulf, now in its one hundred and eighty-fifth day. Overnight into Monday, the United States and Iran exchanged direct fire for the first time since late July, ending a month-long pause in open hostilities. U.S. Central Command says it struck launchers and troops on Larak Island as Iranian forces prepared to seed the Strait of Hormuz with naval mines. Iran responded by firing missiles and drones at American bases in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. Jordan reports it intercepted all incoming fire, while the UAE said it "responded to" a drone attack. President Trump told Fox News the United States will hit back hard. Brent crude jumped more than three percent Monday, back above ninety dollars a barrel. As Andrew Day reports, the exchange comes days after the six-month mark of a war Trump had expected to be much shorter. In the recent lull, the administration had shifted to a strategy of further strangling Iran's economy while trying to help ships transit the Strait. Day notes the cost at home is visible at the pump: the national average price of gasoline stands at four dollars and eight cents a gallon, up from two ninety-eight on the eve of the war. Staying with the fallout from that war, TAC contributor Jason Jones takes aim at what he calls a new elite narrative: the warning of a sinister "red-green" coalition, red for communists, green for Islamists, said to threaten the American republic. Jones argues the labels are being applied broadly and loosely, with "communists" meaning young Americans angry about their economic prospects, and "Islamists" often meaning simply Muslims, or even Middle Eastern Christians with foreign-sounding names. He reminds readers that in 2024, Arab American and Lebanese American voters helped deliver Michigan for Donald Trump. Trump carried Dearborn with forty-two percent of the vote, and gained roughly nine thousand votes across Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, and Hamtramck, while Kamala Harris fell twenty-two thousand votes behind Biden's totals there. Jones writes that the second Trump administration's continued support for Israel's campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon, and the ongoing war with Iran, represent a betrayal of the anti-war coalition that put Trump in office. He describes the red-green framing as an "inverse color revolution," an attempt, in his words, to persuade Christians to fear their Muslim neighbors, to persuade peace voters that their allies are Marxists, and to dismember the 2024 coalition without ever having to debate it honestly. Jones, writing after a recent trip through southern Lebanon, urges conservatives to hold that coalition together. Turning to monetary policy, new Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh delivered his first major address on August 28th at the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium, and he may have set himself on a collision course with the president who appointed him. As David Brady reports, Warsh used the speech to move against the practice of "forward guidance," the Fed's habit of telegraphing rate decisions well in advance. Warsh argued that markets have grown too dependent on such signaling, and that the central bank needs clean data — including, in his words, the prices and trading volumes of Treasury securities. Brady reads that line as a pointed jab at Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, whose recent buybacks of long-term bonds were meant to push down yields at the long end of the curve. The national debt has now passed forty trillion dollars, and thirty-year Treasury yields recently hit near two-decade highs. Brady notes that Warsh appears aligned with investor Stanley Druckenmiller, who has warned that suppressing the long yield removes the last fiscal disciplinarian the country has. Warsh also placed the blame for sixty-five months of elevated inflation squarely on the central bank, and signaled continued focus on price stability. Markets read that as a hint of possible rate hikes ahead. That puts Warsh at odds with President Trump, who has publicly pressed for cuts. Brady writes that recent Supreme Court decisions should protect the chairman from arbitrary removal, but that the coming Fed meeting will show whether Warsh's inflation-hawk rheto

Good morning! Today is Monday, August 31st 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Ted Snider argues that from Ottawa to Riyadh to Kyiv, U.S. partners are discovering that under President Trump, America's signature is written in pencil, with reversed deals on trade, nuclear cooperation, and Patriot missiles now echoing the earlier collapse of the Iran agreement. On day 184 of the Iran war, top Navy, European, Pacific, and Southern Command leaders have warned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that extending Persian Gulf deployments is draining munitions stockpiles and weakening American posture in other theaters, even as Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei resurfaces in writing to denounce Washington and Israel. Eldar Mamedov takes readers to Karachi, where Gothic cathedrals, Parsi institutions, Hindu temples, and a Christian jazz band at a French consulate reception reveal a Pakistan whose religious minorities. and now for the details. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney took to the airwaves on August 22nd to explain why he walked away from trade negotiations with the United States, exposing Canada to steep American tariffs. Carney offered three reasons: the U.S. proposal demanded compromises on the protection of Canadian culture and the French language; it sought to restrict which countries Canada could trade with; and, at the last minute, American negotiators rewrote items already agreed to. Carney told reporters that under President Trump, America's, quote, "signature was written in pencil." As Ted Snider reports, Carney is not alone in that complaint. Saudi Arabia signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States, only to see Trump announce the following day on Truth Social that there would be no uranium enrichment permitted, and that the deal was now contingent on Riyadh joining the Abraham Accords, conditions never agreed to at the table. Ukraine, likewise, was told in July it would receive rights to manufacture Patriot interceptors. Days later, Trump denied he had ever agreed to any such thing. Snider traces the pattern back to Iran. The 2015 nuclear agreement, which international inspectors repeatedly verified Tehran was honoring, was torn up by Trump in his first term. When Iran signaled willingness to negotiate again this year, including suspending enrichment and accepting expanded inspections, the United States instead bombed Iranian facilities and killed Iranian leaders. Snider concludes that for all the boasts about the art of the deal, what emerges is a pattern of broken deals, one that makes partners and adversaries alike question the value of an American signature. On day one hundred and eighty-four of the Iran war, the Washington Post reports that several senior American military leaders have warned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that extending operations against Iran risks weakening American defense capabilities in other parts of the world. As Jude Russo reports, the Post cited the mid-August Secretary of Defense Orders Book, the internal document detailing how American military assets and personnel are being deployed. The Navy's top admiral, along with the commanders of U.S. European Command, U.S. Pacific Command, and U.S. Southern Command, all objected to extending deployments in the Persian Gulf. The Army and Air Force supported extending deployments, in some cases into 2027, but flagged risks to other theaters from the diversion of assets. The warnings come amid a string of reports about the depletion of American weapons stockpiles, particularly missile interceptors and long-range precision missiles. Russo notes that extended deployments have taken a particular toll on quality of life aboard naval vessels. Meanwhile, Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not been seen in public since the war began in February, issued a written statement on the occasion of Muhammad's birthday, calling the rulers of the United States and Israel enemies of the entire Muslim world. AAA reported a national average of four dollars and eight cents per gallon of regular gasoline. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Sunday, August 30th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Scott Greer argues the conservative intelligentsia's "common good" crusade collides with a Republican base that just wants to be left alone, embracing folk libertarianism over any elite-defined collective mission. Daniel Zoughbie urges Washington to abandon the Munich analogy and seek a Treaty of Ghent-style off-ramp from the six-month Iran war, as casualty counts climb and true costs may exceed a trillion dollars. Treasury launches "Operation Economic Outcast" against Banque Misr's UAE branches, while President Trump touts a Venezuelan oil deal he calls the biggest in world history, giving America equity in 65 billion barrels of reserves. and now for the details. We begin with the war in Iran, now grinding into its sixth month, and a call for Washington to look for an off-ramp before the costs climb further. Writing for The American Conservative, Daniel E. Zoughbie argues that the perpetual invocation of the Munich analogy — the warning against appeasement — has crowded out a more relevant lesson: the Versailles analogy. It was the punitive peace of 1919, Keynes warned, that wrecked Germany and cleared the way for Hitler. Zoughbie contends that maximum-pressure economics has a poor track record. Cutting off Imperial Japan helped bring on Pearl Harbor. Embargoing Cuba brought on the missile crisis. Sanctions on Iraq hollowed out its middle class and paved the way for a second war. He points to the War of 1812 and the Treaty of Ghent as a better model — an honest acknowledgment of stalemate, followed by reciprocal steps to restore the status quo. Under such a framework, Washington would pull back its strike groups, and Tehran would readmit international nuclear inspectors. Zoughbie cites former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who told him the Iran war ranks among the costliest foreign policy blunders in American history. Pentagon figures show 624 wounded service members, and while Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth puts the tab at $37.5 billion, Harvard economist Linda Bilmes estimates true short-term costs closer to $370 billion — with long-term costs likely pushing past a trillion. Zoughbie closes with John Quincy Adams's warning that America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. Staying with the Iran war, the Treasury Department on Friday opened a new front in the economic campaign against Tehran. Jude Russo reports for The American Conservative that the United States will cut the United Arab Emirates branches of Banque Misr — Egypt's second-largest bank — out of the dollar system as the opening move of what officials are calling "Operation Economic Outcast." The bank has thirty days before it loses correspondence rights with American financial institutions. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the department had promised to sever every economic lifeline Tehran has left, and warned that Iran's enablers cannot continue to enjoy access to the U.S. dollar. Treasury alleges that between January 2024 and June of this year, Banque Misr's UAE arm processed roughly $1.8 billion for more than a hundred companies tied to Iranian shadow banking networks. Additional sanctions target the manager of Bank Melli's UAE branch and a Hong Kong trading house. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, in an interview with the Iranian Student News Agency, conceded that the sanctions are biting, telling critics who claim otherwise that "common sense is a good thing." As of Friday's close, Brent crude sat at $89.37 a barrel, and AAA reported a national average of $4.08 for a gallon of regular gasoline. To our south, President Trump on Friday announced what he called, in his words, the biggest oil deal in world history — a public-private arrangement that he says will give the United States majority control over more than 65 billion barrels of proven Venezuelan oil reserves, at no cost to the American taxpayer. Jude Russo reports for The American Conservative that Trump credited Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio with brokering the deal, which he says more than doubles American oil reserves. According to Axios, the transaction will take the form of a partnership with American companies and the Venezuelan government, which still controls the country's nationalized oil industry. An American source described it this way: "It's not a purchase. They're giving us equity." Venezuela's Acting President Delcy Rodriguez — who took power after the American ouster of Nicolas Maduro in January — confirmed the agreement, and said it would generate $209 billion in tax revenue for Caracas. The final details of the transaction have yet to be announced, and Axios notes it is not clear the deal has been fully finalized. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Saturday, August 29th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Five years after the Kabul withdrawal, Curt Mills argues Joe Biden's decision to end America's longest war stands as the bravest presidential act of his lifetime, contrasting Biden's honesty with what he calls a more messianic Pentagon now waging war in Iran. Nikos Mohammadi examines J.D. Vance's invocation of Huey Long at an Ohio steel plant, asking whether the Louisiana Kingfish's substantive populism can actually be revived on the right or will remain merely a matter of style. and now for the details. We begin this morning with a reflection on the fifth anniversary of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan. On August 29th, 2021, a U.S. drone strike in Kabul killed ten people, including seven children, in what CENTCOM commander Frank McKenzie later publicly acknowledged was a tragic mistake. That admission came amid the chaos of an exit from a two-decade war. In a piece for The American Conservative, Curt Mills argues that, five years on, the decision to leave Afghanistan deserves recognition as the bravest and best act of any president in his lifetime. As Mills writes, Joe Biden got the strategy right, and had been right for over a decade, going back to his time as vice president when he privately considered resigning over President Obama's Afghanistan troop surge. Mills contrasts the Biden Pentagon's conduct with what he describes as a more spiritually dishonest and messianic posture under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper, following the American decision earlier this year to enter a new war with Iran. Mills concedes Biden's record was marred elsewhere, particularly on Gaza, on inflation, and on the excesses of the Covid era. But on the core question of ending America's longest war, Mills offers a straightforward verdict: Biden got it done. He also notes that Donald Trump, who negotiated the original Taliban deal, was rolled by his generals on Afghanistan in his first term, and points to the ongoing Iran war as evidence that presidential convictions do not always survive contact with the Pentagon. Vice President J.D. Vance drew attention last week when, speaking at a steel plant in his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, he invoked the memory of Louisiana's Depression-era populist governor and senator Huey Long. Vance quoted Long's famous slogan, "Every Man a King," and tied it to the Trump administration's law-and-order and border agenda. The reference set off alarms among neoconservative commentators, libertarians at Reason magazine, and mainstream liberals, who variously accused Vance of flirting with authoritarianism or socialism. Writing for The American Conservative, Nikos Mohammadi walks through Long's actual record: a state governor who built roads and bridges, expanded LSU, provided free textbooks, ran adult literacy programs, opened low-income hospitals, and eliminated the poll tax, all in a Louisiana previously dominated by Standard Oil and New Orleans oligarchs. Long's Share Our Wealth program, Mohammadi notes, likely pushed Franklin Roosevelt toward the more radical Second New Deal. Long also opposed American imperialism abroad. Mohammadi speaks with former TAC senior editor Rod Dreher, a Louisiana native, who recalls his working-class father defending Long as the reason rural families had good roads and schoolbooks. Dreher argues that the only contemporary politician who could plausibly claim Long as an inspiration is Vance himself, though he cautions against leaning too heavily on a figure whose complex legacy requires so much explanation. Mohammadi's piece raises a sharper question as well: whether Long's substantive populism can be revived on the right, or whether it will remain, for now, a matter of style. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Friday, August 28th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Six months into the Iran War, American materiel is depleted, Gulf energy flows remain choked, and Brent crude sits near ninety dollars a barrel, with Jude Russo warning that Treasury's new "economic D-Day" sanctions push may invite escalation rather than a deal. The White House confirms no negotiations are under way even as Qatar's prime minister and Pakistan's army chief shuttle to Tehran, while Pakistan flatly refuses to join the new American sanctions regime. Another U.S. aircraft carrier is steaming toward the Middle East as gasoline hits a national average of four dollars and ten cents a gallon, tightening the war's squeeze on American households. and now for the details. We begin with the Iran War, which today marks six months since it began. As Jude Russo writes for The American Conservative, the most hysterical early predictions have not come to pass, but the reality is grim enough. Enormous quantities of American materiel have been expended without ousting the ayatollahs or extracting any settlement favorable to the United States. Persian Gulf energy flows remain constricted, Brent crude is hovering between eighty-five and ninety dollars a barrel, and Iranian retaliatory strikes have battered American bases across the region to the point that the U.S. military is hesitant to use them. Regional partners are faring worse: Qatari natural gas exports are down ninety-six percent since the war began. The administration's answer is more of the same. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent this week announced what he called "economic D-Day," ramping up sanctions and hinting that nations refusing to isolate Iran could be cut out of the dollar system. Russo notes that this is the sort of measure a country can only use once, and one that tends to invite serious unintended consequences. He points to the 2022 attempt to cut Russia out of SWIFT, which was supposed to bring Moscow to its knees within a month. Pakistan, which has served as a mediator between Washington and Tehran, has already said it will not cooperate with the new sanctions. Russo's judgment is that the negotiating table is a piece of furniture no one seems to love. President Trump said Wednesday he's "in no hurry" for a deal, and outgoing Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt spent her final morning at the podium touting "Operation Economic Outcast." Russo warns that if Iran's economy becomes untenable, Tehran may itself take the escalatory initiative, striking American and allied assets, including energy infrastructure. When you give and take in peace, he writes, that's a deal. When you give and take in war, that's a capitulation. Six months in, no end is in sight. Staying with the war, the White House confirmed Thursday that no talks with Iran are currently under way, even as mediators shuttle to Tehran. Jude Russo reports that Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News, quote, "No negotiations are happening right now, and this will continue until the president feels that maybe they come to the table in a meaningful way." President Trump echoed that message in a Wednesday interview with Al Jazeera, saying he has no timeline and is in no hurry. Meanwhile, Qatar's Prime Minister Mohammed al-Thani visited Tehran Thursday, following a Monday visit by Pakistan's army chief Asim Munir. Pakistan, long a diplomatic channel between Washington and Tehran, said Thursday it will not participate in the new American sanctions. The Pentagon has announced that another aircraft carrier is heading to the Middle East for a roughly seven-month deployment. Brent crude opened Thursday at eighty-seven dollars and twenty-seven cents a barrel, and AAA reported a national average of four dollars and ten cents per gallon of regular gasoline — a direct pinch on American families at the pump. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Thursday, August 27th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. With the Iran war now in its 180th day, Iran and Oman appear close to a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even as the White House launches Operation Economic Outcast to squeeze Tehran's trading partners into compliance. Doug Bandow argues that Russian and Chinese support for Iran is a predictable response to Washington's overreach, and that piling on more sanctions and Ukraine aid will only deepen the hole—the real fix is ending a war he calls obvious and disastrous. Rob York examines why South Korea's President Lee Jae-myung is openly branding Netanyahu a war criminal, and what his push for greater autonomy from Washington means for the U.S.–Korea alliance. and now for the details. We begin with the war in Iran, now in its 180th day. Iran and Oman appear close to a deal that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most vital energy chokepoints. The two Gulf nations announced Tuesday they had discussed a joint temporary navigational corridor and a joint project to clear the Strait of mines. Global oil prices responded overnight, with Brent Crude falling below ninety dollars a barrel. Iran effectively closed the Strait after the U.S. and Israel launched the current war in late February. A framework peace deal signed in June envisioned an Iranian-Omani partnership to administer the waterway, but that framework collapsed after the U.S. worked to create a transit corridor near the Omani coastline, outside Iranian control. Tehran says it won't open the sea passage until Washington lifts its own naval blockade of Iranian ports. Only five commodity vessels transited the Strait on Tuesday, well below the ten-day average of fifteen. As Andrew Day reports, the White House is leaning on economic pressure to force the Strait open on terms favorable to Washington. On Monday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Operation Economic Outcast, aimed at isolating Iran by punishing its trading partners. China, which buys roughly eighty percent of Iran's oil exports, has objected, with its Foreign Ministry insisting bilateral cooperation with Tehran falls within international law. Staying with the Iran war, hawks in Washington are increasingly alarmed by Russian and Chinese support for Tehran, and are calling for a tougher American response, including expanded intelligence and munitions support to Ukraine, sanctions on Beijing, and interdiction of Chinese shipments tied to Iran's missile program. Doug Bandow pushes back hard on that prescription. He argues that Russian and Chinese assistance to Iran is a predictable response to Washington's attempt to run the world, not a shocking act of effrontery. Bandow points out that the United States has done far more for Ukraine against Russia than Moscow is now doing for Iran, and that ratcheting up support for Kiev would only invite more Russian aid to Tehran. As for China, Bandow writes that Beijing sees a weakened president and appears willing to dare further economic escalation, with rare earths and a hoped-for trade deal both at risk. The better response, he argues, is to end the war. Bandow calls the February attack on Iran, launched during negotiations, a mistake both obvious and disastrous, waged without a coherent strategy and premised on the fantasy of unconditional Iranian surrender. Forbearance, he concludes, would reduce openings for Moscow and Beijing to harm American interests, and would let Washington finally put America first in practice, not just in slogan. Turning to East Asia, South Korea's progressive President Lee Jae-myung has been openly denouncing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, labeling him a war criminal, comparing Israel's conduct in Gaza to Nazi massacres and to Japan's wartime comfort women system, and suggesting Netanyahu could be arrested if he set foot on South Korean soil. This from a country that, like Israel, was founded in 1948, signed a free trade agreement with Jerusalem in 2019, and long shared a Cold War alignment with the United States. As Rob York reports, Lee's posture reflects both the damage to Israel's standing since October 2023 and a broader shift in Seoul's relationship with Washington. Lee is not, York writes, the pro-Beijing sellout his domestic critics claim. He has kept ties with Japan warm and wants the U.S. engaged on the peninsula. But he is pushing for greater South Korean autonomy, including transferring wartime operational control of Korean troops to Seoul and accelerating a landmark nuclear submarine deal with the Trump administration. When President Trump scaled down U.S.–South Korea military exercises, Lee praised the move and used it to press his case for self-reliance. York argues that this drive toward greater autonomy among American partners is likely to outlast Lee's term, and is something Washington should welcome, though he suggests it be handled with more tact than has been sh

Good morning! Today is Wednesday, August 26th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Treasury launches "Operation Economic Outcast" against Iran on day 179 of the war, but analysts warn the sweeping sanctions could escalate rather than replace military conflict as Tehran vows it knows "how to play the game.". Ted Snider argues Trump's tariff threats, annexation talk, and bombing warnings against allies from Canada to Oman have squandered global trust in Washington and ended the era of American hegemony. CIA Director John Ratcliffe made an unannounced eight-hour visit to Moscow on Tuesday, the first known trip by an agency chief to the Russian capital since 2021. and now for the details. We begin with the Iran War, now in its 179th day. The Treasury Department on Monday unveiled the long-promised "Economic D-Day" against Iran, an initiative dubbed Operation Economic Outcast. The package widens secondary sanctions to new sectors, imposes penalties on nearly 60 Iran-linked entities, suspends licenses for Iranian remittance payments and academic exchanges, and issues new guidance aimed at blocking third-country cooperation with Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the campaign as unprecedented, though he declined to set deadlines for compliance or to single out China, which buys close to 90 percent of Iranian oil. Tehran's economy minister responded that Iran has "our own tools" and knows "how to play the game." As Luke Nicastro reports, some analysts warn the measures could escalate rather than replace military conflict. Iran expert Sina Toosi told the New York Times that the harder Washington pushes third countries to sever Iran's remaining lifelines, the stronger Tehran's incentive becomes to make participation in that isolation costly. Meanwhile, Israeli strikes in Gaza reportedly killed at least four people Monday, including two children, and the Israeli Defense Forces have struck Gaza on six of the seven days since Jared Kushner's visit last week urging de-escalation. An oil tanker was hit by a projectile off the coast of Oman, cross-Strait traffic hit a three-month low, Brent crude is trading around 86 dollars a barrel, and gasoline is averaging 4 dollars and 10 cents a gallon nationally. Turning to the broader diplomatic fallout, Ted Snider takes stock of America's alliances in the age of Trump. Snider invokes the famous line attributed to Henry Kissinger, that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy but fatal to be its friend. President Trump had said he wanted his legacy to be the wars he ended and the wars he never began. But Snider argues Trump will instead be remembered as the president who squandered trust in Washington and ended the era of American hegemony. Canada, America's second-largest trading partner, has been hit with tariffs heavy enough to cripple its economy, and Trump has repeatedly floated annexation as the 51st state. Denmark has faced threats over Greenland. After Spain declined to join the war on Iran, Trump ordered Treasury Secretary Bessent to cut off all trade with Madrid. The Gulf states, who had lobbied against war with Iran, are diversifying away from the American security umbrella—Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey signed a mutual defense pact earlier this month. Oman, a longtime intermediary between Washington and Tehran, has twice been threatened with bombing by the president. And South Korea, described by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as a "model ally," now faces reductions in joint military exercises, prompting Seoul to accelerate its push for military independence. Snider concludes that Trump has jeopardized U.S. leadership and made the world a more dangerous place. In a related development on the diplomatic front, CIA Director John Ratcliffe made an unannounced visit to Moscow on Tuesday. As Andrew Day reports, Ratcliffe traveled aboard a military cargo plane and spent roughly eight hours on the ground in the Russian capital, according to online flight tracking data. The purpose of the visit was not disclosed; CBS News, which broke the story, said only that Ratcliffe was there "for meetings." It marks the first known trip by a CIA director to Moscow since 2021, when then-director William Burns warned President Vladimir Putin against attacking Ukraine. The Trump administration has struggled to broker an end to Russia's war in Ukraine, now in its fifth year, with special envoy Steve Witkoff having made several previous trips to Moscow. Ratcliffe flew from Washington to Riga, Latvia on Sunday before continuing on to the Russian capital. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Tuesday, August 25th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. On day 178 of the Iran War, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unveils an "economic D-Day" targeting nations still trading with Tehran, as Iran vows to shut down Persian Gulf oil flows and Brent crude climbs past ninety-three dollars a barrel. Andrew Day argues that Trump, the self-declared nationalist-in-chief, has a curious blindspot — failing to anticipate that his aggressive posture activates nationalist backlash abroad, from a defiant Canada rallying behind Mark Carney to an Iranian public closing ranks around its regime. Jack Hunter traces Ted Cruz's remarkable ideological journey from Tea Party ally of the Pauls and critic of "crazy neocons" to the most nakedly hawkish, pro-Israel contender eyeing the 2028 Republican nomination. and now for the details. We begin on day one hundred and seventy-eight of the Iran War, where the Trump administration is opening a new front — this time financial rather than military. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, writing in a Sunday op-ed for the Financial Times, announced what he called an "economic D-Day," describing it as the single greatest financial offensive ever marshalled against an adversary. The specifics are expected at a Monday press conference, but Bessent's op-ed signaled new punitive measures targeting third countries that continue doing business with Tehran. Nations that cut Iranian ties, he suggested, will gain deeper access to global capital; those that don't should expect to share in Iran's isolation. Tehran responded with defiance. Mohsen Rezaei, the new head of Iran's National Security Council, warned that if the economic war continues, not a single drop of oil will leave the Persian Gulf — and that any country participating in the American campaign will be treated as a combatant. As Jude Russo reports for The American Conservative, this escalation comes as military strikes have failed to force Iranian capitulation, and as Pakistan's military chief travels to Tehran in an effort to revive stalled peace talks. Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains depressed. Brent crude opened Monday at over ninety-three dollars a barrel, and AAA reports the national average price of regular gasoline now stands at four dollars and ten cents. That economic pressure campaign against Iran is part of a broader pattern that Andrew Day examines in a new essay for The American Conservative. Day argues that President Trump, who has done more than perhaps any modern figure to promote American nationalism, has a curious blindspot: he seems unable to anticipate that other nations feel nationalism too — and that his aggressive posture can activate those sentiments against American interests. Consider Canada. Last week Trump said a trade deal was near; instead, the two countries are on the verge of a trade war. Canadian favorability toward America has dropped from fifty-four percent in 2024 to about a third today. Prime Minister Mark Carney, under domestic pressure not to yield, imposed reciprocal tariffs and framed Trump's demands as an infringement on Canadian sovereignty and French-Canadian culture. Seventy-six percent of Canadians back him. Day quotes Montreal writer Theodore Shouse, who told TAC that Canadians across the political spectrum are looking past their differences in the face of Trump's aggression, with Canadian flags now flying even in upper-middle-class Liberal neighborhoods. The same dynamic, Day writes, is playing out in Iran. After Trump killed the country's leadership and threatened to annihilate Iranian civilization, the Islamic Republic hardened and its people rallied around the regime. Tens of millions turned out for the funeral of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Day concludes that until Trump develops what analysts call strategic empathy — an intuitive grasp of the pride and attachment that motivate other peoples — he will struggle to secure the interests of the nation whose nationalism he understands so well. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Monday, August 24th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Liam Childers argues that Trump's decision to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea reflects sound strategic logic, opening room for diplomacy with a more capable North Korea while acknowledging Seoul's growing independence in defining its own defense interests. Kourosh Ziabari traces the unpopular Iran war, now in its 177th day with just 35 percent approval and a $37.5 billion price tag, to decades of fearmongering by hawkish think tanks and self-styled Iran experts who sold Washington a fantasy of easy regime change. and now for the details. We begin on the Korean Peninsula, where President Trump's decision to substantially reduce joint military exercises with South Korea has stirred debate in both Washington and Seoul. Trump framed the move as a response to Seoul's refusal to aid the U.S. war against Iran, and South Korea's foreign minister appears to share that reading. But the office of South Korean President Lee Jae Myung actually welcomed the possibility of warmer U.S. relations with North Korea as a pathway to stability on the peninsula. Writing for The American Conservative, Liam Childers argues Trump has good reason to scale back. Childers notes that North Korea today is more capable than during Trump's first term, having expanded its nuclear and missile arsenal and deepened ties with Moscow and Beijing. Under these conditions, exercises long viewed by Pyongyang as invasion rehearsals may cost more diplomatically than they deliver militarily. Childers points to the collapse of the Hanoi summit as a lesson: Washington's insistence on complete denuclearization, after watching what befell Iraq, Libya, and now Iran, gives Kim Jong Un no rational incentive to disarm. Meanwhile, Childers observes, Washington itself has been quietly redeploying THAAD assets and even the USS George Washington away from Asia toward the Middle East, leaving the Pacific without a single American aircraft carrier. President Lee, rather than treating this as a crisis, has emphasized greater South Korean control over its own defense and pursued a friendlier posture toward Beijing. Childers concludes that securing peace in Asia may require America to do less, not more. Now to the ongoing war with Iran, which entered its 177th day this weekend. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll of more than 4,500 American adults in early August, just 35 percent approve of the war, up only slightly from 27 percent when it began five months ago. American taxpayers have so far spent at least 37.5 billion dollars on the campaign. Writing for The American Conservative, Kourosh Ziabari examines what he calls the absence of honest advisors in Trump's second term, and traces the war back to decades of fearmongering by a network of hawkish think tanks, media conglomerates, and self-styled Iran experts. Ziabari points to groups like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and United Against Nuclear Iran, along with figures such as Joshua Muravchik and the late Michael Ledeen, who argued for years that Iran was uniquely immune to diplomacy and could only be dealt with through force. Ziabari argues these voices sold the White House a fantasy: that bombing would swiftly bring regime change and that Iranian leaders would flee to Moscow the moment ordnance began to fall. Instead, he writes, Iran has proven neither a monolith nor a fragile client state. Its borders were not drawn by post-war convention, its institutions are multi-layered, and its people carry a deep antipathy to foreign intervention that predates the 1953 coup. Ziabari cites former National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent, who observed that the war is failing because of a fundamental lack of understanding of the country and the region. The stalemate today, Ziabari concludes, belongs on the ledger of the lobbyists and experts who fed Washington misinformation for a generation. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Sunday, August 23rd 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll is set to exit the Pentagon by year's end amid a broader departure of Vance allies from the administration, fueling speculation about Hegseth's rising star and a possible Vance 2028 campaign. On Day 176 of the Iran War, Tehran declares a shift from defensive to offensive posture as Trump calls the Strait of Hormuz "American territory" and gas prices climb to $4.10 a gallon. Republican lawmakers and cattle producers revolt against Trump's temporary easing of beef import tariffs, with Nebraska's delegation warning the move betrays America's ranchers. and now for the details. We begin at the Pentagon, where Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll is poised to leave the Trump administration by the end of the year. Driscoll, a former Yale Law School student and longtime friend of Vice President J.D. Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance, had at one point been widely tipped as a possible successor to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The Hill has reported a months-long turf war between the two, though tensions had appeared to cool for much of this year. As Curt Mills reports for The American Conservative, Hegseth's standing has been bolstered by his frontline television appearances during the administration's operations against alleged narcoterrorists, the rendition of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and the ongoing Iran War. Chatter about a possible Hegseth presidential run has grown, with the secretary visiting Iowa this week. Mills notes that Driscoll's exit comes alongside a broader wave of departures among close Vance allies. Vance's longtime chief of staff Jacob Reses, national security advisor Andy Baker, and White House legislative affairs director James Braid have all left or are on their way out. Whether this reflects the early scaffolding of a Vance presidential campaign, an internal purge of Vance loyalists, or some combination of both, Mills writes, is not yet clear. Turning overseas, we are now on Day 176 of the Iran War, and Tehran says its military posture has formally shifted from defensive to offensive. Brigadier General Mohammad Akraminia told Iranian state media that Iran will respond to any act of aggression immediately and on a broader scale than the aggression itself, though he clarified that Tehran does not intend to launch preemptive attacks. Akraminia described the Strait of Hormuz as a source of decisive geopolitical influence for the Islamic Republic. Iran effectively closed the waterway after the U.S. and Israel launched the current war in late February, though Tehran has now granted Iraq limited permission for some of its oil tankers to transit the strait. As Andrew Day reports for The American Conservative, President Trump described the Strait of Hormuz as, quote, "an American territory" during a campaign rally in South Carolina on Friday. Iran's deputy foreign minister dismissed the claim as delusions. The United States is maintaining a blockade against vessels entering and exiting Iranian ports, and this week Washington escalated threats of economic warfare against Tehran, opening what Day describes as a new phase of the war. Iran's armed forces chief of staff has warned of a devastating response. Meanwhile, at home, AAA reports the average American gasoline price at four dollars and ten cents per gallon on Saturday, up from two ninety-eight on the eve of the war. To the American heartland now, where Republican lawmakers and cattle industry groups are pushing back against President Trump's decision on Friday to temporarily ease tariffs on beef imports. The National Cattlemen's Beef Association said it was disappointed by the move, warning it would undercut America's beef industry. Meriwether Farms, an American beef company, responded on X with a single word: "Betrayal." Trump announced the policy on Truth Social, arguing it would lower food prices amid a shortage in America's beef herd. For the next 90 days, the U.S. will allow up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef to be imported without the out-of-quota tariff, which normally runs 26.4 percent. As Andrew Day reports, Americans are paying about 25 percent more for beef since Trump returned to the White House, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The backlash from GOP lawmakers has been sharp, especially from Nebraska's federal delegation. Senator Deb Fischer wrote that flooding the market with foreign beef hurts the domestic livestock industry and undermines the long-term solution, which is growing the U.S. cattle herd to meet demand. Nebraska, Day notes, is known as "the beef state" because of the industry's importance to its economy. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Saturday, August 22nd 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. On day 175 of the Iran War, President Trump threatens an "economic D-Day" against Tehran as Brent crude nears $94 and gas hits $4.11 at the American pump. Jack Kieffaber warns that new SDNY U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald's prosecution of Tricolor founder Daniel Chu under the dormant "financial kingpin" statute will test whether Manhattan's era of lawfare is truly over. Jude Russo reflects on Massachusetts's new late-term abortion law and the aporia of a pro-life movement that intellectually condemns abortion as murder while politically treating it as one issue among many. and now for the details. We begin with day one hundred and seventy-five of the Iran War, where the front has shifted from the battlefield to the ledger. President Trump this week threatened what he called an "economic D-Day" against Tehran, promising the most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent followed up with a warning that any nation retaining ties to Iran would face, in his words, "economic oblivion." The Treasury Department has re-designated Hezbollah as a specially designated global terrorist group, tagging it explicitly as an Iranian proxy, and Bessent is expected to unveil further measures on Monday. Reaction abroad has been mixed. China's foreign ministry rejected the pressure campaign and called for diplomacy. The United Arab Emirates, however, which was Iran's top trading partner last year, has announced it is cutting all economic ties with Tehran. As Andrew Day reports for The American Conservative, the war continues to roil global energy markets. Brent Crude sits near ninety-four dollars a barrel, and the average price of gasoline at the American pump is now four dollars and eleven cents. Iran's lead negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, told his countrymen Friday they must prepare to weather what he called unjust sanctions. Turning to the Justice Department, and a story about whether the era of lawfare in Manhattan is truly over. Jamie McDonald was sworn in last month as the new U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, succeeding Jay Clayton, who has moved on to serve as director of national intelligence. McDonald inherits an office once famed for its measured independence, but one that under the Biden years developed a reputation for aggressive, politically tinged prosecutions, from the raid on Rudy Giuliani to the failed case against Mayor Eric Adams. Jack Kieffaber, writing for The American Conservative, argues that the reclamation project is far from finished. Kieffaber focuses on the case of Daniel Chu, founder of the subprime auto lender Tricolor, which collapsed into bankruptcy last September amid an industry-wide meltdown. Three senior executives have pleaded guilty to cooking the books. But prosecutors are pursuing Chu himself under a dormant statute known as the financial kingpin law, which carries a mandatory minimum of ten years and a maximum of life in prison. Kieffaber notes the lead prosecutor, Micah Fergenson, came up through Democratic politics as an aide in the Obama White House counsel's office under Norm Eisen. Kieffaber warns that under the government's theory, any CEO whose subordinates commit fraud could face life imprisonment on cooperator testimony alone. He argues that between now and the January trial, McDonald's handling of the Chu case will show whether Manhattan's era of prosecutorial weaponization is genuinely over, or merely under new management. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Friday, August 21st 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Leonid Ragozin argues that Western belligerence, not internal dissent, has become Vladimir Putin's most reliable insurance policy, as doomsday readings of the Yabloko ban and a fired state bank economist miss the reality of Russian public opinion. Ted Galen Carpenter warns that NATO's embrace of gender-equal conscription, alongside a December 2025 provision pushing automatic Selective Service registration, threatens to reverse one of America's great post-Vietnam victories for individual liberty. The U.S. gross national debt crossed $40 trillion for the first time in history on Wednesday, with net interest costs alone consuming nearly 14 percent of federal spending last year. and now for the details. We begin this morning with a fresh look at Russia, its politics, and the Western assumptions driving policy toward it. Ahead of next month's elections for the Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament, the liberal Yabloko party has been dropped from the ballot. And Russia's state-run bank VEB has fired its chief economist, Andrey Klepach, after he offered dark predictions about the country's future at a professional gathering. Both stories are being read in the West as fresh signs that Vladimir Putin is losing his grip. As Leonid Ragozin reports for The American Conservative, the reality is more prosaic. The Yabloko ban echoes the removal of the party's founder from the 2012 presidential ballot, a technical maneuver by an authoritarian regime, not a sign of imminent collapse. And Klepach, Ragozin notes, was fired for candor at a professional event, but in the same breath expressed support for Putin's war and confidence that the Russian economy would endure. Ragozin points to Levada Centre polling showing 66 percent of Russians still support the army's actions in Ukraine. His argument cuts against a quarter-century of Western doomsday forecasts: so long as Putin can present himself as defending Russia from a hostile West, ordinary Russians are unlikely to rise up against him. Ragozin traces the pattern back to the 2008 NATO Bucharest Summit, when President George W. Bush opened the path for Ukraine and Georgia to join the alliance, and forward through the West's obstruction of successive diplomatic settlements, from Minsk in 2015 to Istanbul in 2022. His conclusion is that Western belligerence, far from weakening Putin, has become his most reliable insurance policy. Next, a warning about a quiet shift underway across NATO countries, and possibly here at home. Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have now extended military conscription to women, and according to reporting in the Wall Street Journal, other European members of the alliance are looking to Copenhagen's gender-equal draft as a model, alongside proposals to lengthen terms of service. Writing for The American Conservative, Ted Galen Carpenter argues this trend represents a perverse turn: instead of expanded personal liberty, women stand to become equal partners with men in what he calls militarized government serfdom. Carpenter reminds readers that the United States ended conscription in January 1973, under President Nixon, in response to public discontent during the Vietnam War. But the machinery has never been fully dismantled. In 1980, the Carter administration required male citizens and legal residents to register with the Selective Service System at age 18. And a provision in the December 2025 National Defense Authorization Act directed the agency to adopt automatic registration, a change one anti-draft activist called the largest shift in Selective Service law since 1980. Carpenter notes that in 2021, the House Armed Services Committee approved a bill creating a gender-neutral draft registration requirement, and that voices from Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank to actor Rob Schneider have called for mandatory service. Carpenter's argument is that the correct response to concerns about discrimination is not to conscript women alongside men, but to maintain an all-volunteer force limited to genuine defensive missions, not, in his words, aggressive imperialist ventures operating under the guise of defense. To the nation's finances now. The U.S. gross national debt crossed $40 trillion on Wednesday for the first time in history. Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that the Trump administration had inherited a troubled economy, noting that under the previous administration the debt was growing faster than American GDP, and said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is, in his words, very much on top of it. As Harrison Berger reports for The American Conservative, the New York Times projects the United States will borrow more than $2 trillion this year alone to cover its obligations, including the ongoing Iran War and the tax cuts enacted in 2025. Net interest costs on the debt approached $1 trillion in 2025, consuming nearly 14 percent of all federal

Good morning! Today is Thursday, August 20th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Ted Snider argues Ukraine is losing the air, land, and economic wars and will soon be forced back to talks on worse terms than the 2022 Istanbul deal that Washington and London pressed Kiev to abandon. On day 173 of the Iran war, the Financial Times reports Tehran is weighing strikes on U.S. assets in southeastern Europe, including Bulgaria's Bezmer airbase, as the UAE suspends trade with Iran and gas prices remain elevated. In a stunning Florida Democratic Senate primary upset, DSA-aligned Angie Nixon defeated heavy favorite Alexander Vindman, the retired Army officer and key witness in the 2019 Trump impeachment. and now for the details. Our top story this morning concerns the war in Ukraine, where the strategic picture continues to darken for Kiev. A forty-day drone campaign ordered by President Volodymyr Zelensky back in June, aimed at forcing Russia back to the negotiating table, has by most accounts failed. Over the summer, Russian forces have advanced toward the cities of Ukraine's so-called fortress belt, with Konstantinovka reportedly falling or on the verge of falling. Ukraine faces a severe manpower shortage, its supply of Patriot air defense interceptors is at or near zero, and new jet-powered Russian drones are outpacing Ukrainian defenses, battering the port of Odessa. Writing for The American Conservative, Ted Snider argues that Ukraine, not Russia, now looks likely to be the first party forced back to talks — and that the terms on offer will almost certainly be worse than what was available in the spring of 2022. Snider assembles an extensive record of testimony from Ukrainian negotiators, foreign mediators, and Western officials indicating that a deal was within reach at the Istanbul talks that year. Ukrainian negotiator Davyd Arakhamia described the agreement as an eight out of ten, with Russia prepared to end the war in exchange for Ukrainian neutrality. Oleksiy Arestovych called it the most profitable agreement Ukraine could have reached. Snider catalogues statements from former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Swiss ambassador Jean-Daniel Ruch, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, all pointing to the same conclusion: that Washington and London pressed Kiev to walk away. Then-Senator J.D. Vance made the same point on the Senate floor. Snider concludes that after hundreds of thousands of casualties, millions displaced, and vast territory lost, it is time to apologize to Ukrainians for pushing them off the path of negotiations in the first months of the war. Turning to the Iran war, now in its one hundred seventy-third day. The Financial Times reports that Tehran is weighing retaliatory options against U.S. assets in Europe should President Trump further escalate the conflict. Harrison Berger reports for The American Conservative that Iranian planners have reportedly considered strikes in southeastern European countries such as Bulgaria, which last month approved American military use of its Bezmer airbase for refueling. Bulgaria's defense minister had assured legislators that hosting U.S. aircraft would not make his country a party to the war. Iran has also weighed targeting underwater fiber-optic cables in the Strait of Hormuz. The chief of staff of Iran's armed forces warned Wednesday that any assistance to U.S. military operations would be treated as direct participation in the conflict. Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates announced it would suspend all trade with Iran, citing regional escalations, and accused Tehran of firing two ballistic missiles at maritime traffic in the Persian Gulf — a claim Iran denies. The war continues to weigh on American households at the pump. Brent crude sat above ninety-two dollars a barrel Wednesday morning, and AAA recorded the national average price of regular gasoline at four dollars and nine cents per gallon. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Wednesday, August 19th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Day one hundred seventy-two of the Iran conflict brings no diplomatic movement, with President Trump declaring the Strait of Hormuz "New U.S. Territory" as the naval blockade tightens and Brent crude climbs above ninety-one dollars. George O'Neill Jr. delivers a scathing verdict on the second Trump administration's foreign policy, arguing that operations in seven countries have shattered the America First promise and exposed the fantasy of American military supremacy. Andrew Day dismantles the multiracial realignment narrative, warning that demographic shifts in states like Texas and Georgia are pointing the GOP toward a future that looks unmistakably like New York City. and now for the details. We begin with the ongoing conflict with Iran, now in its one hundred and seventy-second day. President Trump announced on Truth Social Tuesday that there are, in his words, no talks or conversations going on, or scheduled, with the Islamic Republic. The president also confirmed that the U.S. naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz remains in full force, and in a separate post labeled the strait as, quote, "New U.S. Territory." According to Kpler data cited by Reuters, only six commodity ships transited the strait on Monday. Iran's Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Tehran will not reopen the strait until Washington honors commitments made in a June memorandum of understanding, including lifting the blockade, releasing frozen assets, and ending military operations. That memorandum's sixty-day deadline expired Monday. As Harrison Berger reports, Ghalibaf is leading a high-level parliamentary delegation to Iraq on Wednesday, as pro-Iran militias there face a September 30th deadline from Baghdad to disarm. Meanwhile, Syria condemned reported Israeli strikes on Abu Duhur airbase, and even U.S. envoy Tom Barrack called the strikes an unnecessary escalation. Brent crude closed Tuesday morning above ninety-one dollars a barrel, with the national average gas price at four dollars and seven cents. In a sweeping essay published Tuesday, George D. O'Neill Jr. argues that the second Trump administration's foreign policy has departed sharply from the America First, anti-forever-war promises of the campaign trail. O'Neill notes that the administration has now conducted military operations in at least seven countries, while the war against Iran, along with the continuing conflict in Ukraine, is exposing what he calls the fantasy of American military supremacy. He points to the failure of expensive American defense systems to protect Persian Gulf allies from Iranian missile and drone strikes, and observes that a nation one-fourth the size of the United States, with an economy smaller than the Pentagon's budget, can practically name its next targets. O'Neill also connects this to a broader pattern of institutional decay, citing the recently released Fauci diary entries, the ongoing secrecy around the Epstein files, and decades-old assassinations whose records remain classified. His conclusion: the rules-based order has become a pretext for elite interests abroad, and Americans, especially younger ones, are moving past skepticism into what he describes as righteous fury. Turning to domestic politics, a provocative piece from Andrew Day challenges the conventional wisdom that Donald Trump's 2024 victory heralded a durable multiracial Republican realignment. Day argues that the numbers tell a different story. Around 84 percent of Trump's 2024 voters were white, only modestly more diverse than Mitt Romney's coalition in 2012. And no Republican presidential nominee since Herbert Hoover has won a majority of any nonwhite racial group. Day points to the current midterm polling in Texas and Georgia, both now majority-nonwhite states, where white voters strongly prefer Republican Senate candidates but Democrats are projected to win, in Georgia potentially by double digits. He argues that countermajoritarian institutions like the electoral college and Senate malapportionment have masked the underlying demographic trend, but that these buffers are eroding as younger, more diverse cohorts age into the electorate. Day points to New York City, once ninety percent white in 1950 and now just thirty percent white, where Republican mayoral candidates have become, in his words, comic relief, and where socialist Zohran Mamdani won last year's general election. His forecast: the political future of the country, absent a serious Republican reckoning, looks a great deal like Gotham. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Tuesday, August 18th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. The 60-day U.S.–Iran memorandum of understanding expired Monday with Tehran denying any extension, as Iran hardens its demands to include war reparations, sanctions relief, and a full American military withdrawal from the region. On day 171 of the Iran War, President Trump threatened to bomb Oman if it "gets in the way" of a deal, even as Vice President Vance stressed cheap gasoline as the administration's top priority and Brent crude closed above $89 a barrel. Allum Bokhari argues Anthropic's lonely stand against open-weight AI models is less about safety than about walling off competitors, aligning the company with Democratic regulatory instincts and a familiar monopoly playbook. and now for the details. We begin with the Middle East, where the 60-day deadline on the U.S.–Iran framework peace deal expired Monday. That agreement, known as the memorandum of understanding, was signed in June by President Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. It was meant to lock in a ceasefire, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and set the stage for talks on Iran's nuclear program. It fell apart within weeks. The Saudi outlet Al Arabiya reported Monday that Washington and Tehran had agreed to extend the ceasefire, but Iran's Foreign Ministry appeared to contradict that account. Spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said, quote, "We did not start any negotiations at all, and the U.S. violated the understanding from the very beginning; therefore, the 60-day issue is not relevant." As Harrison Berger reports for The American Conservative, the deal broke down after Iran accused the United States of opening an alternative shipping lane in the Strait outside Iranian management. Tehran struck vessels using that route, and Washington resumed its bombing campaign, with the most recent intensive round of strikes coming in late July. Berger notes that Iran's latest proposal, published August 8th, reflects a firmer bargaining position than what it accepted in June. The New York Times reports Tehran is now demanding the U.S. lift its naval blockade and sanctions, withdraw American forces from around Iran, pay war reparations, release frozen assets, and end attacks on Iran's regional allies. Staying with the war, now on day 171. President Trump told Fox News on Monday that if Oman, quote, "gets in the way" of an Iran deal, the United States will "bomb the s-word out of them." In a separate Truth Social post, Trump said the number one goal of the Iran War is ensuring that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon in any form. Those remarks appear to sit uneasily alongside comments from Vice President JD Vance last Thursday, who said the administration's "goal number one" is to keep oil and gasoline cheap for Americans. As Harrison Berger reports, Special Envoy Jared Kushner held talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, a day after meeting Hamas's Khalil al-Hayya in Egypt. Meanwhile, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said in a weekend interview that Israel should be killing "thirty to forty" people each night in Gaza, adding, quote, "there are people there who are not worthy of life." On the economic front, the shipping analytics firm Kpler recorded 95 confirmed crossings through the Strait of Hormuz last week, but just three on Sunday. Yemen's Houthis said Monday they had targeted a Saudi military vessel and four escort ships in the Red Sea. Brent Crude closed above $89 a barrel, and AAA recorded the national average price of regular gasoline at $4.06 per gallon. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Monday, August 17th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Chris McCallion and Daniel DePetris warn that the Trump administration is laying the groundwork for military action against Cuba, arguing the island is a collapsing state ninety miles from Florida rather than a genuine threat—and that invasion would trigger refugee flows and a Haiti-style descent into armed chaos. With the Iran war in its 170th day, Trump has ordered the USS George Washington to replace the troubled USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East, leaving the western Pacific without a single U.S. aircraft carrier as China's naval buildup continues. Peter Van Buren argues that America's health care crisis is not only about insurance but access, with nearly 11 percent of insured adults unable to get an appointment and a 1997 cap on Medicare-funded residency slots still throttling the supply of new doctors. and now for the details. We begin this morning with signs that the Trump administration is laying the groundwork for military action in Cuba, even as the Iran war grinds on. The Pentagon has reportedly been weighing military options for the island, and the State Department recently issued a report alleging that Havana is behind a decades-long campaign of subversion against the United States. This comes on top of a sanctions regime designed to starve Cuba of fuel, cripple its tourism industry, and shut down its medical missions abroad. President Trump has spoken vaguely about, in his words, "taking Cuba," and has pointed to January's special operation that captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro as a possible precedent. Writing for The American Conservative, Chris McCallion and Daniel DePetris argue that Cuba poses no real danger to the United States. They describe the island as a quasi-failed state ninety miles from Florida, with an economy hollowed out by a 64-year embargo, an electrical grid that barely functions, and armed forces shrunk to a negligible size. The biggest threat, they contend, is not Cuban aggression but Cuban collapse. McCallion and DePetris warn that an invasion would risk large refugee flows, an explosion of armed groups, and a Haiti-style trajectory into regional drug trafficking. They urge Trump instead to reopen relations and ease sanctions in exchange for Cuba cutting security ties with Russia and China—a diplomatic win, they argue, that would beat what they call a gambler's approach to foreign policy. Turning to the Iran war, now in its 170th day. President Trump has ordered the USS George Washington to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East, a move that will leave the western Pacific without a single U.S. aircraft carrier. The swap follows reports of serious mental health and supply problems aboard the Lincoln, which had been at sea for more than 200 days without a port call. Several service members reportedly attempted to jump overboard. Central Command commander Admiral Brad Cooper visited the ship Saturday, praising the crew as a "strong team of high-achieving Americans." As Luke Nicastro reports for The American Conservative, Washington and Tehran now appear set to blow past the timeline for a comprehensive agreement laid out in the June memorandum of understanding—Monday marks sixty days since that document was signed. Meanwhile, the Houthis say they struck Yemen's military with ballistic missiles and drones in the Red Sea. The pulling of America's last Pacific carrier to sustain a Middle Eastern war raises hard questions about strategic priorities at a moment when China's naval buildup continues apace. To the home front now, and a look at what may be the quieter half of the American health care crisis. According to the Centers for Disease Control, nearly 11 percent of insured U.S. adults could not get a medical appointment when they needed one in the past year—a problem unrelated to cost or coverage. Roughly 4 percent could not find a physician who would accept their insurance, and another 2 percent said providers were simply too far away, an especially acute issue in rural America. Peter Van Buren, writing for The American Conservative, describes helping a friend with a severe case of shingles who cycled through three emergency rooms and could not find a primary care physician willing to see her in under six weeks. Van Buren notes that Canada, often held up as a model, has its own access crisis, with a median wait of 30 weeks from referral to treatment and 17 percent of adults lacking a family doctor. He points instead to Denmark, which pairs universal coverage with voluntary private insurance and assigns nearly every citizen a primary care physician. Van Buren also flags a structural American bottleneck: the 1997 Balanced Budget Act froze Medicare-funded residency slots at 1996 levels, throttling the training of new doctors even as the population ages. His conclusion is blunt—coverage under any system is not the same as access. Those are toda

Good morning! Today is Sunday, August 16th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. A new trilateral defense pact signed in Mecca by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey signals that the Middle East's heaviest hitters are quietly moving to diversify away from American protection. As the war with Iran drags into its 169th day, President Trump vows to declare the Strait of Hormuz U.S. territory while dismissing morale concerns aboard the long-deployed USS Abraham Lincoln. Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon kill at least 11, including women and children, as Defense Minister Katz declares Israel will not withdraw from occupied "security zones" in Lebanon, Syria, or Gaza. and now for the details. We begin this morning in the Middle East, where a significant realignment is taking shape. On August 7th, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met in Mecca to sign a new trilateral defense pact. The agreement brings together three of the region's heaviest hitters: Turkey, which fields NATO's second-largest army; Pakistan, the only Muslim nation with a nuclear arsenal; and Saudi Arabia, the world's leading oil producer. Pakistan's foreign ministry says an attack on any one of the three will be regarded as an attack on all — language that echoes NATO's famous Article 5. As Ted Snider writes for The American Conservative, the pact leaves important questions unanswered — not least what concrete support each party would actually provide, and how these new commitments intersect with existing alliances like NATO. But Snider argues one thing is already clear: the region's powerhouses are quietly signaling that they no longer view American protection as sufficient. Gulf countries were badly bruised by a war with Iran they had warned Washington against, and they feel abandoned by the failure of promised U.S. protection. Turkish, Egyptian, Pakistani, and even Omani officials are now openly calling for a new regional security architecture — what Pakistan's defense minister bluntly calls an "Islamic NATO." Erdogan has said the alliance is open to other nations, and Egypt is expected to eventually join. Snider concludes that while much remains uncertain, the diversification underway could offer one silver lining for Americans: it may finally facilitate the long-overdue U.S. military disentanglement from the Middle East. Turning to the ongoing war with Iran, now in its 169th day. President Trump said Friday that "pretty soon" he will be "declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States." Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister responded on Saturday that "the Strait of Hormuz has been Iranian, is Iranian, and will remain Iranian," vowing that Tehran would continue to enforce its blockade. On Saturday, Iran attacked a tanker owned by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company in the strait. As Harrison Berger reports for The American Conservative, President Trump also dismissed concerns about the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln following press reports of serious morale and mental health issues among its crew. Asked whether the Lincoln's more than 250-day deployment had gone on too long, Trump replied that it was "not nearly long enough," though he added the ship would be replaced soon. The war continues to weigh on American wallets: Brent Crude closed Friday at $88.52 a barrel, and AAA recorded the national average price of regular gasoline at $4.07 per gallon. In Lebanon, at least 11 people — including two women and three children — were killed Saturday in Israeli strikes on the towns of Ansar and Deir-al-Zahrani. Prime Minister Netanyahu said the strikes were a response to an earlier Hezbollah attack that he claimed seriously injured three Israeli soldiers inside what Israel calls its "security zone" in southern Lebanon. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun condemned the killing of "an entire family" in Ansar and denounced repeated Israeli violations of the framework agreement signed by Lebanon, Israel, and the United States back in June. Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri went further, calling Israel's military operations a "war of extermination." As Harrison Berger reports, Israel does not appear to be moving to end its occupation. Defense Minister Israel Katz said Thursday that "under no circumstances will we withdraw from the security zones: not in Lebanon, not in Syria and not in Gaza." Hezbollah, which is not a signatory to the June agreement, has refused direct talks and warned that the U.S.-brokered deal could create conditions for civil war. According to the Lebanese health ministry, more than 4,300 Lebanese have been killed by the Israeli military since March. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Saturday, August 15th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. As the war in Iran enters its 168th day, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent promises unprecedented economic isolation while Ivan Eland argues the shift to sanctions signals a quiet admission that Trump's military campaign has failed. Susan Collins's path to reelection has narrowed sharply after Maine Democrats swapped scandal-plagued Graham Platner for former state senate president Troy Jackson, who now leads in every recent poll and prediction market. Scott Greer argues that AOC's dismissal of "Woke 1" as a past excess is a cynical rebrand, as Democrats from Zohran Mamdani to Wisconsin's gubernatorial contenders quietly carry the same radical commitments into 2028. and now for the details. We begin with the ongoing war in Iran, now in its 168th day. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters Thursday that new measures against Tehran are coming next week, describing what he called a combination of economic isolation "like the world has never seen before," along with a continued blockade of the Strait of Hormuz aimed at halting all traffic in and out of Iranian ports. Vice President J.D. Vance said keeping oil and gas prices low for Americans is now, in his words, "goal number one" at the White House. Brent Crude closed Friday at $88 a barrel, with the national average price of regular gasoline at $4.08. On the Iranian side, a parliamentary committee spokesman said Friday that Tehran has approved the general outline of a plan that would bar American, Israeli, and other so-called hostile vessels from transiting the Strait. As Harrison Berger reports, the human toll on American forces is drawing new scrutiny. The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, deployed for more than 250 days, is being sent home and replaced by the USS George Washington. Military Times and Stars and Stripes have reported multiple incidents in which sailors attempted to jump overboard, with crew members intervening to stop them. Meanwhile, Israel has intensified its bombing campaign in southern Lebanon. That pivot to economic warfare is the focus of a companion analysis by Ivan Eland, who argues the strategy is unlikely to deliver what the president needs. Eland writes that President Trump appears to be quietly acknowledging that the military campaign against Iran has failed, and is now shifting to what Trump himself calls a "low-key," longer-term approach centered on reopening the Strait of Hormuz rather than on further strikes. Eland notes the timing is telling. The shift coincides with public reporting that American missile stockpiles have been mismanaged and cannot be replenished quickly, and with maximalist demands from Iran's Supreme National Security Council, which is now insisting on an end to sanctions, lifting of the blockade, withdrawal of U.S. forces from the region, and even war reparations before reopening the Strait. Drawing on his own academic research, Eland argues that sanctions rarely achieve their political ends. Comprehensive multilateral sanctions failed to dislodge Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, and Iran, he notes, has open land borders and a maritime relationship with the United Arab Emirates that will blunt any economic squeeze over time. Sanctions, he writes, tend to rally populations around even odious regimes. His conclusion is blunt: rather than wait on economic attrition, the president should cut his losses and take whatever deal with Tehran he can still get. Turning to the midterm map, Senator Susan Collins of Maine faces a tougher reelection fight than many Republicans expected. After Democratic nominee Graham Platner suspended his campaign in July amid a cascade of controversies, Maine Democrats reloaded behind Troy Jackson, the former president of the state senate and a longtime logger from Aroostook County. As Spencer Neale reports for The American Conservative, Jackson has picked up Platner's populist economic message—calling for higher taxes on the wealthy and Medicare for All—without carrying Platner's personal baggage. Recent polling from Public Policy Polling, the University of New Hampshire, and Hart Research all show Jackson leading Collins by three to five points, and prediction markets on Polymarket and Kalshi give Jackson the edge as well. Neale notes that Jackson has repeatedly won reelection in rural, Trump-trending Aroostook County, complicating Republican efforts to paint him as an out-of-touch progressive. A story in the Maine Wire has raised questions about Jackson's personal life, but so far it has not broken out of conservative media. Neale writes that Collins's larger problem may be her own party—struggling to sell an unpopular war in Iran and facing negative marks on the economy—as a former logger makes the case for economic reform to Maine's working families. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting

Good morning! Today is Friday, August 14th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. On day 167 of the Iran war, the CIA reportedly doubted Israeli intelligence about a plot against Trump's life that sent him fleeing Air Force One in a catering cart, as the Pentagon has now lost a quarter of its Reaper drone fleet. Eldar Mamedov reports that Tehran, judging Washington incapable of honoring any deal, has settled on a strategy of "neither war nor peace" while waiting out Trump's term. But that patience carries a price: as Iran leans harder on proxies like the Houthis, it risks driving Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey—now bound by the new Mecca Joint Defense Agreement—into open hostility. and now for the details. We begin on day one hundred sixty-seven of the Iran war, where new reporting from the Washington Post raises fresh questions about the intelligence driving American decisions. According to the Post, the CIA doubted the veracity of a purported Iranian threat against the President's life during last month's NATO summit in Ankara. That threat prompted Trump to secretly leave Air Force One via a catering cart and fly home on a second plane. The intelligence, it turns out, came from Israel's spy services. One U.S. intelligence official described the assassination threat as, quote, "Israeli-derived, not U.S.-generated, and viewed by the CIA as low confidence." Meanwhile, the Pentagon has lost at least forty-five MQ-9 Reaper drones during the war—about a quarter of its total fleet—amounting to over one point three billion dollars in equipment. On the Strait of Hormuz, Iran's central military headquarters flatly denied Trump's claim of American "total control" over the waterway, insisting no commercial ship or oil tanker will pass without permission from Iran's armed forces. And in Israel, Defense Minister Israel Katz declared that Israel will, quote, "under no circumstances," withdraw troops from occupied territory in Lebanon, Gaza, or Syria. Harrison Berger notes that the International Energy Agency now predicts oil demand will fall by one point six million barrels a day this year, with continued war disruptions undermining global supply. Brent crude sits at eighty-six dollars sixty cents a barrel, and AAA reports the national average price of gas at four dollars and seven cents per gallon. Staying with the Iran conflict, a senior advisor to Iran's Parliament Speaker was recently quoted saying, "Trump will not reach an agreement with us. We will put up with him until his term ends." That posture reflects a broader shift in Tehran. Following the February U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and the assassination of moderate figure Ali Larijani, Iran's Supreme National Security Council has been reshuffled, with hardline IRGC veteran Mohsen Rezaei now ascendant. As Eldar Mamedov reports, Tehran has concluded that Washington is simply too dysfunctional to honor any agreement. A prior memorandum, brokered with Pakistani and Qatari mediation, required Washington to lift sanctions and unfreeze Iranian assets—commitments Tehran says were not kept. So Iran is pursuing what one advisor calls "neither war nor peace," betting on strategic patience until a new American president takes office. But Mamedov warns this strategy carries hidden costs. To keep pressure on Washington, Iran must lean harder on proxies like the Houthis, whose closure of the Bab-el-Mandeb to Saudi vessels is antagonizing Riyadh. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey have just signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, partly aimed at Houthi threats. Mamedov argues that if Tehran waits out Trump while its proxies alienate its neighbors, Iran could find itself isolated from the very regional powers now laying the groundwork for a new Middle East. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Thursday, August 13th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Day 166 of the Iran War brings dueling claims over a Hormuz ceasefire, a deadly Houthi strike in the Bab el-Mandeb, and mounting economic pain at the American pump. James Pinkerton likens Washington's munitions panic to Britain's 1915 Shell Crisis, arguing the real failure is strategic — underestimated drones, a Patriot pipeline that won't catch up until 2030, and a CENTCOM still pushing for more bombardment. Karoline Leavitt announces she will step down as White House Press Secretary at the end of August, citing her young children, with no successor yet named. and now for the details. We begin with the Iran War, now in its one hundred and sixty-sixth day. A senior Iranian official told Reuters Wednesday that there are no ongoing discussions between Tehran and Washington to extend the ceasefire under the June memorandum of understanding. That contradicts a report from Turkey's Anadolu news agency, which cited anonymous Pakistani sources claiming an extension to the sixty-day ceasefire had been agreed to. Pakistani officials also claim the U.S. and Iran are nearing "some sort of arrangement" over the Strait of Hormuz, but Qatar, Iran, and Oman all describe those talks as strictly bilateral between Muscat and Tehran. On Truth Social, President Trump insisted, quote, "The U.S.A. has total control over the Strait of Hormuz. I THINK WE WILL KEEP IT." Shipping data tells a murkier story. Kpler reported fourteen Hormuz crossings Tuesday, while Reuters counted only eight — which would be the lowest daily total since August 5th. In the Bab el-Mandeb, Yemen's Houthis struck the Egypt-flagged Tihamah, killing at least four crew members and two first responders. Harrison Berger reports Brent Crude sat at $88.75 a barrel Wednesday morning, with the national average gas price at $4.04. Moody's Analytics estimates the war has now cost the typical American household about $1,000 in fuel costs and Pentagon-related taxes. Staying with the war, a debate has erupted in Washington over whether the U.S. is running dangerously low on precision munitions and missile interceptors. Reuters reported the U.S. has used "virtually all" of its long-range precision missiles, and Fox News cited data suggesting nearly 80 percent of key interceptors have been depleted. The White House flatly denies it. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called the reports "100 percent fake news," and the President has vowed to hunt down the leakers. In a sweeping essay for The American Conservative, James P. Pinkerton draws a parallel to Britain's 1915 "Shell Crisis" during the First World War, when Prime Minister Asquith's government fell over munitions shortages and David Lloyd George rose as the "Welsh Wizard" of wartime mobilization. Pinkerton argues the deeper problem isn't just shell counts — it's that American war planners underestimated Iranian and Houthi drones, and that the Patriot supply isn't projected to meet demand until roughly 2030. He notes CNN's reporting that Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine is "looking for an off-ramp," while CENTCOM keeps agitating for more bombardment. Pinkerton's judgment: Trump tried on the role of War President, and it didn't fit. He points to TAC's Jude Russo and the new Mecca Agreement — Saudi Arabia to be defended by Pakistan and Turkey — as a sign the Gulf may build its own stabilizing order. Trump, Pinkerton concludes, would do well to return to being the Peace and Prosperity President. A major personnel shift at the White House. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt will step down at the end of August, President Trump announced Wednesday. Leavitt, who returned to the podium after the birth of her daughter, said in a statement on X that she could not "be the best mom my two young children deserve while devoting the constant time, energy, and attention required" of the role. President Trump called her one of his most trusted aides and said she will remain a top outside adviser and a Republican voice heading into the November midterms. Joseph Addington reports that Leavitt served as an assistant press secretary in the first Trump administration, later as communications director for Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, and ran unsuccessfully for Congress in New Hampshire in 2022 before joining the 2024 Trump campaign as national press secretary. Her successor has not yet been named. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Wednesday, August 12th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Luke Nicastro dissects Mike Lee's failed August recess gambit to argue that Congress has become a hollowed-out stage for viral clips and donor theatrics, passing fewer laws than at any point since before the Great Depression while surrendering its role as a coequal branch. On day 165 of the Iran war, a U.S. helicopter struck a Panama-flagged tanker off Oman as Trump and Tehran traded maximalist demands, the Houthis expanded their maritime embargo in the Bab al-Mandab, and Brent crude pushed past $90 a barrel with gasoline hitting $4.01 at the pump. and now for the details. We begin on Capitol Hill, where a small procedural fight late last month has become a window into the state of the legislative branch. Senator Mike Lee of Utah publicly objected to the Senate going into its August recess before passing the SAVE America Act, a bill imposing national voter ID requirements. Lee demanded a roll call vote and reportedly had more than twenty Republican colleagues willing to back him. But on August 8, the Senate recessed without objection, no roll call was held, and the bill remains unpassed. Writing for The American Conservative, Luke Nicastro uses that episode to argue that Congress, as an institution, is fake — not in the sense that it does nothing, but in the sense that it has been hollowed out. Nicastro notes that 18,350 bills have been introduced in the 119th Congress, near a historic high, yet only 104 have become law — the fewest since before the Great Depression. Many of those simply rename post offices or make narrow administrative fixes. Nicastro describes members treating the Capitol as a stage for donors and viral clips rather than a jobsite, with committee hearings organized around producing punchy video for X and YouTube. Down-dais members, he writes, arrive to secure their place in the questioning order and then leave, while staffers text them when their turn approaches. Most striking, Nicastro argues, is that Congress has lost any sense of itself as a coequal branch. He points out that the current Congress has allowed President Trump to prosecute what he calls an illegal and unwinnable war in the Middle East, just as the 117th Congress stepped aside when President Biden effectively suspended immigration enforcement. Nicastro contrasts this with the 1970s, when Congress passed the War Powers Resolution and the Impoundment Control Act, and even the Reagan years, when Bob Dole opened a congressional probe of Iran-Contra. He closes with Gibbon's description of the Roman emperors preserving the forms of the Senate long after emptying it of power — and with Trump's own quip, in a Monday press conference, that "sometimes I'd like to get rid of the Senate too." To the Iran war, now in its 165th day. The Wall Street Journal reports that on Tuesday a U.S. military helicopter fired a missile at a Panama-flagged vessel the Pentagon says was trying to run the American blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Maritime security firm Vanguard identified the ship as the Vela Nova, struck off the coast of Oman. Harrison Berger reports for The American Conservative that the strike comes amid a hardening of positions on both sides. On Monday, President Trump posted a list of demands to end the war on Truth Social, including compensation from Iran for U.S. soldiers killed by the IRGC during the Iraq War, and damages for casualties in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Gaza. That came in reply to Tehran's own six demands for reopening Hormuz: an end to U.S. threats, a permanent halt to fighting across the region, the withdrawal of U.S. naval and air forces, the end of the American blockade, the lifting of international sanctions, and reparations to Iran. Meanwhile, Yemen's Houthis attacked a cargo ship crossing the Bab al-Mandab, killing at least three people in what Berger reports is the first non-Saudi vessel targeted since the Houthis declared their maritime embargo last month. The economic effects are showing up at home: Brent crude rose above $90 a barrel Tuesday morning, up more than ten percent over the past week, and AAA now records the national average price of regular gasoline at $4.01 a gallon. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Tuesday, August 11th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's push to end tenure and rewrite curricula at America's war colleges draws cautious praise from reformers, who tell Kelley Beaucar Vlahos the deeper rot—ticket-punching sabbaticals, 95 percent graduation rates, and a culture rewarding conformity over judgment—will survive his crusade against wokeness. Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the U.S.-backed fifteen-point Gaza plan linking Hamas disarmament to Israeli withdrawal, telling his cabinet that no Palestinian state will be established on his watch, even as Hamas reaffirms its commitment to the roadmap and mediators press for compliance. and now for the details. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is pushing sweeping changes at the nation's service academies and war colleges, seeking to end tenure for instructors and impose a line-by-line review of curricula to align teaching with what he calls tactical, operational, and strategic combat leadership. But a range of current and former military educators and senior officers say the reforms, while welcome in some respects, miss the deeper rot in professional military education. As Kelley Beaucar Vlahos reports for The American Conservative, sources across the war college system describe institutions that have become ticket-punching sabbaticals, with graduation rates north of 95 percent and a culture that rewards conformity over independent judgment. Retired Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor called the failing strategy in the ongoing Iran War a massive indictment of the entire military system, arguing top commanders should have been rigorously schooled to push back against unworkable plans. Former Naval War College professor Lyle Goldstein told TAC the most hawkish instructors were promoted fastest, isolating those who took a more nuanced view of American power. Retired Major Donald Vandergriff said the schools produce officers who are process-compliant rather than outcomes-focused. West Point law professor Tim Bakken, who recently prevailed in a lawsuit against the academy over a speech policy, warned that curbing faculty speech in the name of a warfighter ethos could damage critical thinking as much as the diversity mandates the administration is trying to root out. Vlahos also notes structural problems Hegseth hasn't addressed: roughly 70 percent of academy graduates leave before a 20-year career, up to a quarter of undergraduates are recruited as athletes, and Congress is now weighing looser waivers to send academy football players directly to the NFL rather than serve their five-year commitment. Macgregor's verdict: the single-service war college belongs in a museum next to the woolly mammoth. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rejected the U.S.-backed fifteen-point plan to link Hamas disarmament in Gaza to a phased Israeli withdrawal, a proposal President Trump had called a monumental step toward lasting peace and security. Netanyahu told his cabinet that Israel does not accept the document, insisting Israeli forces would not withdraw until Hamas surrendered all weaponry, heavy and light. He also rejected the plan's language on a credible pathway toward Palestinian self-determination and statehood, declaring that as long as he is prime minister, a Palestinian state will not be established. As Joseph Addington reports, the roadmap was unveiled July 30th by the Board of Peace, the body Trump established to oversee the Gaza ceasefire. It gave the two sides two weeks to work out sequencing, but Hamas wants Israel to halt operations and begin withdrawing immediately, while Israel demands full disarmament first. Hamas on Sunday reaffirmed its commitment to the roadmap and called on mediators to press Israel to comply. Netanyahu said his government would continue talks with Washington but would oppose even its closest allies when he judged Israeli security to require it. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Friday, August 7th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. On day 160 of the Iran conflict, Trump publicly denies reports he was blindsided over munitions shortages, even as Tehran signals openness to renewed talks and Brent crude holds above eighty-one dollars. Jack Hunter examines how progressive Democrat Abdul El-Sayed's Michigan primary win, and a rising crop of antiwar socialists, may be seizing the America First mantle from a GOP now backing neocon Mike Rogers. With Trump overseeing the very kind of foreign war he once vowed to avoid, figures like Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Thomas Massie are working to offer voters what they call a genuine America First alternative. and now for the details. We begin with the ongoing conflict with Iran, now in its 160th day. The Washington Post reported this week that President Trump, during a cabinet meeting at Camp David, pressed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on why he had apparently been misled about extreme munitions shortages. According to two sources familiar with the exchange, the president had believed those problems were already resolved. On Thursday, Trump publicly denied the reporting, posting on Truth Social that the United States has, in his words, massive amounts of munitions, with more being manufactured and shipped as needed. He also warned that leakers of what he called treasonous statements were being hunted down, and that long-term jail sentences would be sought. On the diplomatic front, Iran announced an agreement with Oman on a proposed shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz, though an Iranian spokesman cautioned that the deal does not, on its own, mean the Strait is safe for passing vessels. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said Tehran is negotiating directly with Washington and has received signals of American readiness to return to prior commitments. At a Las Vegas event Wednesday, Trump said he would rather make a deal with Iran because he does not want to kill people. As Harrison Berger reports, the price of Brent Crude sat above eighty-one dollars a barrel Thursday morning, with the national average price of regular gasoline at four dollars and six cents per gallon. Turning to a striking political realignment shaping the Michigan Senate race. Progressive Democrat Abdul El-Sayed narrowly defeated Congresswoman Haley Stevens in Tuesday's primary, running hard against foreign aid, against AIPAC, and against U.S. military spending abroad. El-Sayed told Detroit Public Radio that tax dollars should be invested in American health care and education rather than sent overseas to buy bombs and tanks. President Trump promptly endorsed El-Sayed's Republican opponent, former Congressman Mike Rogers, calling him an America First patriot. As Jack Hunter reports, that label deserves closer scrutiny. Rogers is a Bush-Cheney Republican who voted for the Iraq War in 2002 and supported the full Global War on Terror package, from torture to mass surveillance. AIPAC endorsed him immediately after the primary. Hunter notes that Trump himself, in his second term, is now overseeing the very kind of foreign war he once vowed to avoid. Last week, only four House Republicans joined 210 Democrats in voting for a war powers resolution to end the war with Iran. Hunter points to a new crop of antiwar Democrats, from Claire Valdez in New York to Zohran Mamdani, who are picking up messaging that not long ago belonged to MAGA. Leftist podcaster Hasan Piker declared at El-Sayed's victory party that this movement represents the real America First. Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, and Joe Kent are now working on a project to give voters what they call a genuine America First option. Hunter concludes that if socialist Democrats can make a better America First case than Republicans, that may say more about the Republicans than about their opponents. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Thursday, August 6th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Andrew Day argues that Israel is effectively vetoing President Trump's Middle East agenda, from the terms of Hamas disarmament in Gaza to a Saudi civilian nuclear deal, stalled Iran talks, and a possible F-35 sale to Turkey. On day 159 of the Iran War, new reporting indicates the U.S. has burned through nearly 80 percent of its THAAD interceptors and half its Patriots, even as Oman, Iran, and Washington inch toward an interim deal on the Strait of Hormuz. W. James Antle III warns that Wisconsin's Francesca Hong and a new wave of socialist Democrats may squander their opening by embracing peak-woke cultural politics, but cautions that MAGA's chances to answer them are not unlimited. and now for the details. Our lead story this morning concerns the limits of American sovereignty in the Middle East. President Trump announced last Thursday on social media what he called a historic agreement for the complete disarmament of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza, adding that as disarmament proceeded, Israeli forces would withdraw. But on Monday, following a meeting between top officials of Trump's Board of Peace and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, the Board issued a statement saying, contrary to what it called inaccurate reports, that Israeli forces would only withdraw after Hamas handed over all its weapons. That was not what Trump had described, and not what Hamas had understood. Writing for The American Conservative, Andrew Day argues this is part of a pattern. In late July, the administration announced a civilian nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, only for Trump to declare the next day on Truth Social that the agreement was, in his words, totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords—a condition Day says was designed to sink a deal Israel opposed. Day also points to the collapse of nuclear talks with Iran last year. He cites Joe Kent, who resigned this March from a senior counterterrorism post, telling TAC that Israel and its American supporters pressed the White House to demand zero uranium enrichment in order to, quote, break up the agreement. Day notes a fourth possible episode now emerging. After Trump said in July he would consider selling the F-35 to Turkey, Fox News reported that Israel has pressed the administration against the sale to preserve what is called Israel's qualitative military edge—a policy codified in the 2008 Naval Vessel Transfer Act, which obliges the president to uphold Israel's ability to defeat any credible military threat in its region. Day argues that requirement runs contrary to traditional realist balance-of-power thinking and, in his view, complicates any America First foreign policy. The Iran War entered its 159th day Wednesday, and new reporting sheds light on the strain the conflict is placing on American arsenals. CNN, citing anonymous sources familiar with Pentagon inventories, reported Tuesday that the U.S. military has expended nearly 80 percent of its THAAD interceptors and roughly 50 percent of its Patriot interceptors. One source told the network that virtually all Army Tactical Missile Systems and Precision Strike Missiles have been fired. As Harrison Berger reports for TAC, diplomatic activity is continuing around the Strait of Hormuz. Axios says Oman, Iran, and the United States are closing in on an interim agreement to reopen the strait, though Iranian officials, including comments carried by state broadcaster IRIB on Wednesday, insist the talks have, quote, nothing to do with the United States. One Iranian official blamed U.S. interference and the threat of a military attack for delaying an agreement. President Trump told Fox News the U.S. is having very good discussions with Tehran and warned he would hit the Iranians really hard if they back out again. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X Sunday that the June 17 memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran should serve as the cornerstone of future relations. In the Red Sea, an Indian-flagged tanker reportedly carrying Saudi oil sank after being struck by ballistic missiles, with the Houthis claiming responsibility. Kpler's maritime tracker recorded eight crossings in the Strait of Hormuz on August 4th, down from ten Sunday, while Bab el-Mandeb traffic rose to 34 vessels. Brent Crude was trading below 80 dollars a barrel Wednesday. AAA put the national average price of regular gasoline at 4 dollars and 8 cents per gallon. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Wednesday, August 5th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Luke Nicastro dissects the Ceuta migrant crisis, arguing that Washington's silence on Morocco's apparent weaponization of migration—paired with Trump's flattering message to the Moroccan king—reveals a troubling embrace of accelerationism aimed at punishing Pedro Sánchez. Ted Snider surveys the fifth month of the Iran War, warning that U.S. intelligence sees diminishing returns from further strikes even as munition stockpiles dwindle and the conflict spreads from Jordan to the Red Sea to the Caspian. Snider urges President Trump to resist Zelensky's efforts to widen the war and to seize a narrowing window for negotiations with Tehran. and now for the details. We begin in North Africa, where the Spanish exclave of Ceuta was overwhelmed at the end of July by a surge of more than seventy thousand migrants crossing from Morocco. Ceuta, along with its sister city Melilla, is one of the last remnants of a six-hundred-year-old Iberian presence in North Africa. The crossings burst forth suddenly, apparently coordinated by disappearing social media accounts, and multiple migrants told the New York Times that Moroccan police had actively directed and encouraged them to cross into Spanish territory. Writing at The American Conservative, Luke Nicastro examines the geopolitical puzzle behind the affair. Morocco has a history of using migration as a policy tool, and Rabat has longstanding claims on Spain's remaining North African holdings. But Nicastro draws attention to the response from Washington. The Trump administration has close ties with the Moroccan government—the president recognized Morocco's claim to Western Sahara in his first term, and Rabat recently named a highway in his honor. House Republicans recently passed a bill sending Morocco forty million dollars in aid, with an accompanying committee report suggesting Morocco's claims to Ceuta and Melilla deserve a hearing. Nicastro notes that despite the Trump administration's signature promises to halt illegal migration, there has been no official U.S. condemnation of Morocco's role. Two days into the crisis, President Trump sent a flattering Throne Day message to the Moroccan king, praising his "wise leadership." Nicastro argues that Washington's interest appears to be in using the crisis as a cudgel against Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who has opposed the Iran War, resisted NATO spending targets, and criticized Israel. But the effort may be backfiring: after initial isolation, the EU is now rallying around Madrid, with Belgium's leader warning that migration is being used as a geopolitical weapon. Nicastro concludes that tacit American support for what he calls accelerationism—heightening contradictions to punish a political opponent—is beneath a serious nation. Turning to the Middle East, the American war with Iran now stretches past its fifth month, and a recent assessment by the U.S. intelligence community reportedly concludes that Tehran has demonstrated staying power despite one of the most intensive bombing campaigns in modern history. According to reporting in the Washington Post, our own spy agencies believe further strikes are unlikely to soften Iran's negotiating position. The New York Times reports that few in President Trump's inner circle believe further escalation is wise, with one senior official noting that the strikes are keeping Iran cohesive and helping its leaders focus attention on an external threat. Writing at The American Conservative, Ted Snider argues the war has been a strategic disaster. Before the fighting, Iran had reportedly been willing to submit to rigorous inspections, dilute its high-enriched uranium, and cap enrichment at civilian levels. The Strait of Hormuz, now effectively closed, was open. American munition stockpiles have been badly depleted—Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Dan Caine has reportedly warned the president that further major operations would dangerously drain interceptor supplies needed to defend U.S. bases and allied populations. Snider details how the war zone has widened. U.S. bases in Jordan face regular Iranian strikes. American and Saudi jets have hit Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. A drone recently struck a U.S.-owned gas tanker off Egypt. The Houthis have reopened conflict with Saudi Arabia and closed the Bab al-Mandeb Strait to Saudi shipping. And in late July, Ukraine struck an Iranian ship in the Caspian Sea, in what Snider describes as a reckless attempt by President Zelensky to draw the United States more deeply into his own war. Snider urges the president to apply to Iran the same realism he showed in resisting Zelensky's overtures, and to seize what appears to be a narrow window for peace negotiations. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Tuesday, August 4th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Jude Russo argues that Washington's cycle of extravagant threats and equally extravagant walkbacks—most recently over Iran—is corroding American diplomatic credibility and pushing the country toward the costly lever of force. Iran has flatly denied President Trump's claim that negotiations would begin Monday, even as oil markets briefly swung on the news and CENTCOM reportedly asked analysts for "creative and unconventional" ways to pressure Tehran. Fraser Myers examines why Labour's pro-EU wing is quietly eyeing a return to Brussels—not because voters want it, but because rejoining could lock in open borders, Net Zero, and other policies beyond the reach of British democracy. and now for the details. We begin this morning with a hard look at American credibility on the world stage. Last week saw a familiar cycle out of Washington: rumblings of a massive escalation against Iran, reports that CENTCOM's Admiral Brad Cooper had drawn up a "go-big" option to strike Iranian military assets, and speculation about hitting so-called "Pickaxe Mountain" near the Natanz nuclear site. On Friday, President Trump himself said the U.S. would "be hitting them very hard," and officials leaked to the Wall Street Journal that an attack was imminent. Then, by Sunday, the attack was off — Trump citing interventions from Gulf allies wary of Iranian retaliation against their oil and desalination infrastructure. The president claimed negotiations with Iran would begin Monday. The Iranians promptly denied it. As Jude Russo writes at The American Conservative, this pattern of extravagant threats followed by equally extravagant walkbacks is becoming its own kind of problem. Russo argues that America's diplomatic credibility is eroding — through revised premises, toggled mediation channels, and the use of negotiations as cover for surprise attacks. He points to Trump's post-signing effort to retroactively condition a Saudi civilian nuclear deal on normalization with Israel as another example. His warning: as threats and agreements lose their power, Washington will be pushed toward the one lever that remains — physical force, which he calls limited, expensive, and messy. Russo notes that Iranian elites, according to reporting by Esfandyar Batmanghelidj in TAC, are increasingly convinced the United States is structurally incapable of honoring any agreement it signs. Salvaging that credit, Russo suggests, may require follow-through on the concessive parts of the June memorandum — sanctions relief and the like — and, at minimum, an end to apocalyptic but empty threats. Staying with the Iran file: Iranian officials have publicly denied President Trump's claim that talks to end the war would begin Monday. Trump told reporters Sunday evening that negotiations were set to start the following afternoon, and that he had cancelled planned attacks because of the development. But Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said flatly that "at present, we are not having any negotiations with the US." Iran acknowledged separate talks with Oman focused on establishing a new route for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, but Baghaei tied any real change in the Strait to a lifting of the American naval blockade and an end to what he called U.S. military aggression. Harrison Berger reports for TAC that Trump's remarks did move oil markets briefly — Brent crude fell five percent Monday, back below $84 a barrel — though Iran's denial produced no significant follow-on movement. AAA has the national average price of regular gasoline at $4.10, and Trump used Truth Social to publicly pressure Chevron CEO Mike Wirth and other oil companies to bring retail prices down. Berger also notes CNN reporting, citing anonymous sources, that CENTCOM's intelligence branch has asked analysts to develop "creative and unconventional" ways to pressure and punish Iran — even as the administration publicly pivots toward diplomacy. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Monday, August 3rd 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. On the 156th day of the Iran War, President Trump called off weekend airstrikes and claimed a deal had been reached to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but Tehran flatly denied any agreement and dismissed the announcement as a fresh lie. Esfandyar Batmanghelidj reports from a three-hour debate with a leading Iranian analyst that Tehran's policy establishment has concluded no deal with the Trump administration is achievable, pointing to unfulfilled confidence-building measures, a widening Rubio-Vance rift, and the president's own inconstancy. Jennifer Kavanagh argues that despite Pentagon warnings shaping Trump's hesitation, the United States is not actually running out of missiles to fight Iran—the real munitions crisis is a deeper industrial problem that transcends this war. and now for the details. We begin with the latest developments in the Iran War, now in its 156th day. On Saturday night, President Trump called off anticipated airstrikes on Iran, announcing on Truth Social that Tehran had agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end what he described as its nuclear threat. Trump said the United States and Israel would hold off attacks because, in his words, the perimeters of a deal had been reached. Iran, however, quickly denied any such agreement. Iran's Mehr News agency, citing military officials, called Trump's claim "nothing but a new lie," and the Fars news agency reported no agreement on Hormuz had been made. As Harrison Berger reports, Trump spoke by phone Saturday with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who expressed concern about the president's plans to escalate militarily. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned counterparts in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan that Iran would act decisively if the U.S. and Israel followed through with massive strikes. Meanwhile, Axios reports Qatari mediators held separate talks with Omani officials, Araghchi, and U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff on management of the Strait. The memorandum of understanding signed last month between Trump and the Iranian president broke down largely over disagreements about Hormuz. From Tehran, the mood on diplomacy has darkened considerably. As Esfandyar Batmanghelidj reports, Iranian policy analysts and officials increasingly believe a deal with the Trump administration is simply not achievable. Batmanghelidj recently joined a three-hour debate with Majid Shakeri, a former foreign policy advisor influential in Tehran, who argued Iran must now focus on proactively managing an ongoing American threat rather than pursuing a diplomatic breakthrough. The pessimism, Batmanghelidj writes, rests on hard counting. Iranian analysts point to the administration's failure to execute even basic confidence-building measures from the memorandum of understanding signed earlier this year—no Iranian assets were released, and an oil export waiver was issued, never fully implemented, and then rescinded. They point to a widening rift between the Rubio and Vance camps inside the cabinet, and to a sense that President Trump is too erratic to hold to his own agreements. Even Saudi Arabia, Batmanghelidj notes, could not shield its recent nuclear deal from that inconstancy. His conclusion is striking: rather than press for a comprehensive deal Washington seems unable to deliver, the best path may be for Trump to step back entirely, allowing regional powers—Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates—to advance a neighborhood diplomacy that has, over the past decade, done more than Washington to prevent a full regional war. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Sunday, August 2nd 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. As the war with Iran hits day one hundred and fifty-five, Washington and Israel prepare a massive strike on Iranian energy infrastructure, even as U.S. commanders warn of depleted interceptors and gas prices climb past four dollars a gallon. Scott Greer argues in The American Conservative that the bipartisan backlash against data centers, Flock cameras, and online platforms may quietly advance left-wing goals, starving red counties of revenue, hobbling immigration enforcement, and threatening the online anonymity that has fueled the right. and now for the details. We begin overseas, where the war with Iran has entered its one hundred and fifty-fifth day, and Washington appears to be on the brink of a major escalation. CBS News reported Friday evening that the United States and Israel are preparing what would be among the harshest bombing campaigns of the conflict so far, targeting Iran's energy infrastructure, with strikes possibly beginning this weekend. Speaking to reporters at Camp David, President Trump said, quote, "We'll be hitting them very hard. At some point they are going to say, 'We just can't take it any more.'" Tehran, for its part, is warning of retaliation. Iran's Tasnim news agency quoted a senior security official saying Iran would target critical Israeli and American facilities across the region, and the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council warned that continued war would prompt Iran to further close the Strait of Hormuz and other trade chokepoints. On Saturday morning, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations reported an explosion near a tanker off Oman, and Kuwait's army said it had intercepted incoming Iranian drones. As Harrison Berger reports for The American Conservative, the strain on the U.S. military is becoming difficult to disguise. The head of U.S. European Command warned the Pentagon this week that without more naval reinforcements, he will be less able to protect Israel. Earlier Pentagon assessments, reported by the Washington Post, found that the U.S. has depleted much of its inventory of advanced missile-defense interceptors defending Israeli skies. Meanwhile, at home, the cost is showing up at the pump. Brent Crude closed Friday just under 88 dollars a barrel, and AAA on Saturday put the national average price of gasoline at 4 dollars and 10 cents a gallon, following the collapse last month of a framework peace deal between Washington and Tehran. Turning to domestic politics, a growing bipartisan backlash against Big Tech is reshaping debates over data centers, license-plate readers, and online child safety. But in a new essay for The American Conservative, Scott Greer cautions that these popular measures may quietly serve left-wing goals at the right's expense. On data centers, Greer notes that Republicans and Democrats alike are pushing moratoriums, with governors like Florida's Ron DeSantis leaning into the issue. Yet many deep-red counties depend on the revenue those facilities generate, revenue that has allowed some local governments to slash the very property taxes conservatives want to lower. On Flock cameras, the AI-powered license-plate readers used by police departments, Greer observes that some of the loudest opposition comes from conservatives such as Representatives Tim Burchett, Chip Roy, Andrew Clyde, Anna Paulina Luna, and Thomas Massie, who cite constitutional concerns. But he points out that much of the left's hostility centers on the fact that Flock data has helped ICE and Customs and Border Protection locate illegal immigrants. Cities like Santa Cruz, California, have canceled their contracts on those grounds. Banning the technology, Greer argues, would hamper immigration enforcement and criminal investigations without meaningfully rolling back surveillance elsewhere. Then there is the KIDS Act, which passed the House with nearly 270 votes, more of them Republican than Democratic. The bill imposes age verification across much of the internet, mandates new safety features, and restricts AI bot interaction with minors. Greer, whose new book Whitepill documents the role of anonymous accounts in shaping right-wing politics online, warns that age verification could effectively end online anonymity, a tool that has disproportionately benefited conservative speech. He also points to language requiring platforms to suppress content related to alcohol, gambling, and drug use that could reach children, which he argues opens a backdoor for regulators to pressure companies into censoring so-called hate speech as well. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, he notes, warns that platforms facing legal exposure tend to err on the side of deletion. Greer's bottom line: skepticism of Big Tech is warranted, but conservatives should look carefully at who ultimately benefits from each specific policy. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories

Good morning! Today is Saturday, August 1st 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. The Iran War enters its 154th day with Tehran striking a U.S. air base in Kuwait, claiming hits on Gulf oil tankers, and declaring the Strait of Hormuz closed, as Brent crude climbs to $88.50 and gas hits $4.11 a gallon. Second-quarter U.S. growth slowed to 1.5 percent while inflation runs hot, and the Bank of England warns that a prolonged war and $100 oil could force British rates higher. Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, once seen as a 2028 Democratic hope, is alienating progressives, Republicans, and her own party at once as she tries to govern from the center in an age of insurgent politics. and now for the details. We begin with the ongoing Iran War, now in its 154th day. Iran struck Kuwait on Friday, in what Tehran called retaliation for a U.S. attack Wednesday evening that reportedly killed two adults and their toddler, and injured two other children. According to Iran's state news agency, IRGC suicide drones struck fighter jet shelters, satellite communication systems, and equipment warehouses at Ahmad Al Jaber Air Base. The Wall Street Journal reports the Pentagon is now rethinking the scope of its footprint in Kuwait. Iran also claimed to have struck two oil tankers Friday morning, and its Persian Gulf Strait Authority declared that transit through the Strait of Hormuz is no longer possible. CENTCOM disputes that, insisting the Strait remains open. But shipping tracker Kpler reported commercial crossings dropped from 22 on Wednesday to just 5 on Thursday, all of them using the Iranian route. As Harrison Berger reports, the Washington Post has documented that during July, U.S. forces hit at least six bridges and tunnels around the port city of Bandar Abbas, along with communications lines, a rail station, and a desalination plant. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has announced a new maritime coalition, joined by Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Sudan, and ten other nations, to confront the Houthis in Yemen. Exxon and Chevron both posted record second-quarter profits driven by the war's energy shocks. Brent crude sits at $88.50 a barrel, and the national average price of gas has reached $4.11 per gallon. The economic ripple effects of that war are showing up at home. The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that the U.S. economy grew at an annualized rate of just 1.5 percent in the second quarter, down from 2.1 percent in the first quarter, and well below the roughly 2 percent growth economists had forecast. Harrison Berger notes that while consumer spending held up, with personal consumption expenditures rising 2.1 percent, inflation continues to run above the Federal Reserve's target. Year-over-year PCE is up 3.7 percent, and core PCE, which strips out food and energy, is up 3.3 percent. Across the Atlantic, the Bank of England held its benchmark rate at 3.75 percent, with Governor Andrew Bailey warning that if the Iran War continues and oil prices remain above $100 a barrel, British rates will likely have to move higher. Turning to politics, Virginia's Democratic governor, Abigail Spanberger, is discovering just how hard it is to govern from the center in a polarized age. Six months into her term, the former CIA operative once viewed by the Democratic establishment as a reliable 2028 contender is watching her party swing toward the insurgent left, exemplified by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. As Spencer Neale reports, Spanberger has managed to alienate nearly every faction she's tried to bridge. She declined to back a Democratic push to replace Virginia Supreme Court justices after they struck down a mid-decade redistricting measure. She vetoed two immigration-related bills favored by progressives, then issued an executive order limiting state cooperation with ICE, satisfying neither side. She has defended tax exemptions for the data centers now dominating northern Virginia, drawing the nickname "Data Center Diva" from a fellow Democrat, State Senator Louise Lucas. A Virginia Commonwealth University poll found 72 percent of Virginians oppose those exemptions, and rural yard signs read "Grow Tomatoes, Not Data Centers." And on gun rights, Spanberger signed an assault weapons ban after her own attempts to soften its language were rejected by her party. Her approval sits at 44 percent. Neale draws a pointed comparison to former Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, who faced similar cross-pressures and ended up with his own national ambitions in limbo. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Friday, July 31st 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. A little-noticed provision in the 2027 NDAA, Section 219, would create a Pentagon executive agent to synchronize U.S.-Israel defense cooperation across AI, quantum, biotech, and cyber—prompting Rep. Thomas Massie and a handful of Republicans to break ranks and call it a betrayal of American sovereignty. Harrison Berger reports that while Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz insist the measure merely formalizes existing ties, Prime Minister Netanyahu himself has described it as a shift from aid to partnership, and Democratic leaders Schumer and Jeffries have stayed conspicuously silent. W. James Antle III argues that Anthony Fauci derailed Trump's first term and Lindsey Graham may yet derail his second, as the Iran War grinds into its 153rd day with depleted munitions and Hormuz blockades fueling inflation. and now for the details. We begin this morning with a provision buried in the National Defense Authorization Act that critics say could bind America's military future to a foreign power. Two weeks ago, the House passed its version of the 2027 NDAA. Tucked inside is Section 219, which would create a single executive agent inside the Pentagon tasked with synchronizing U.S.-Israel defense cooperation across research, development, acquisition, manufacturing, and joint exercises. The Senate's parallel bill contains a similar measure, Section 1217. Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, joined by six other Republicans, broke with his party to vote no, calling the provision a betrayal of American sovereignty. Republican Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio has also come out against defense industrial integration, saying he doesn't think we should integrate our military with anybody. Defenders, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Senator Ted Cruz, argue the section merely formalizes existing cooperation. But as Harrison Berger reports for The American Conservative, the plain text of the provision reaches far beyond programs like Iron Dome. It covers artificial intelligence, quantum technology, biotechnology, cyber, and directed energy, and it leaves the door open for cooperation with essentially any Pentagon entity. Berger notes that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself, in a recent Fox News interview, described the arrangement as moving from aid to partnership, and has floated a joint sixteen billion dollar research and development fund. Democratic leadership, Berger writes, has been conspicuously silent, with neither Chuck Schumer nor Hakeem Jeffries responding to requests for comment. Berger's conclusion: by writing this cooperation into statute, Section 219 would make any future unwinding of the relationship far more difficult, no matter who occupies the White House. In an analysis piece, W. James Antle III draws a striking parallel between two figures who shaped the two Trump presidencies. Antle observes that Anthony Fauci pleaded the Fifth this week at nearly the same time memorial services were concluding for the late Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. His argument is that Fauci's counsel derailed Trump's first term, and Graham's counsel may yet derail the second. In both cases, Antle writes, Trump's first instinct was to defer to the experts, elevating Fauci during the pandemic and trusting Graham's hawkish judgment on Iran. In both cases, the president was assured the crisis would be short. Instead, Antle reports, the Iran War is now in its 153rd day, marked by fruitless negotiations, depleted munitions, and economically ruinous blockades of the Strait of Hormuz that have fueled inflation. Antle cites a new Wall Street Journal documentary in which Graham reportedly told associates after the initial strikes on Iran, quote, look what we've done here, I almost cried. How long have we been pushing this? Some of Graham's aims, according to the reporting, went too far even for Prime Minister Netanyahu. Antle's verdict is that both situations pulled Trump away from what he does best and toward reassuring a nation in crisis, and neither project has redounded to the president's benefit. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Thursday, July 30th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Iran's Revolutionary Guard struck U.S. positions in Jordan on day 152 of the war, prompting President Trump to vow a "beating" in retaliation, while U.S. and Saudi airstrikes on Iraq's Popular Mobilisation Forces reportedly killed six Iranian advisers. Dr. Ionut Popescu argues in The American Conservative that the Iran war is a lose-lose trap, with Operation Epic Fury failing to break Tehran while hardliners now menace the Strait of Hormuz and U.S. bases across the region. Popescu warns that more than a thousand Tomahawks expended on Iran, alongside depleted Patriot and THAAD stockpiles, have opened what CSIS calls a dangerous window of vulnerability for a Western Pacific conflict with China. and now for the details. We begin with the war in Iran, now in its 152nd day, where a brief pause in hostilities appears to be over. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched missile attacks on U.S. positions in Jordan, framing the strikes as a response to what Tehran called illegal American interventions. The Jordanian military says it shot down five Iranian missiles, with no casualties or damage reported. In an interview with Fox News, President Trump vowed to give Iran, in his words, "a beating" in retaliation for what he called a surprise attack. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and the United States carried out overnight airstrikes against Iraq's Popular Mobilisation Forces, responding to attacks on Saudi oil facilities that Washington and Riyadh blame on Iran-aligned Iraqi militants. The Associated Press, citing Iraqi militia officials, reports that six Iranian advisers were killed in that strike. As Harrison Berger reports, a senior Iranian official told Reuters that Tehran has rejected Oman's proposal for joint management of the Strait of Hormuz, and Yemen's Houthis are said to be weighing tolls on maritime traffic through the Red Sea. Shipping tracker Kpler showed an uptick in commercial crossings through both the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb. Brent Crude sat at ninety dollars a barrel Wednesday morning, with the AAA national average price of regular gasoline at four dollars and nine cents per gallon. Turning to analysis of that conflict, Dr. Ionut Popescu argues in The American Conservative that the Iran war is a lose-lose situation for both Washington and Tehran, and a symptom of a larger disease: American adherence to a militaristic grand strategy that ignores the realities of a multipolar world. Popescu writes that since Operation Epic Fury launched in late February, heavy-handed military confrontation has failed to produce structural change inside the Iranian regime. Instead, it has pushed Tehran toward more disruptive capabilities, and hardliners now hold the Strait of Hormuz hostage and threaten U.S. bases across the region. Popescu points to Clausewitz's warning that war must serve policy. The U.S. air campaign, he says, achieved tactical successes, destroying nuclear facilities and air defenses, but failed at its core objectives of neutralizing Iran's nuclear program and triggering regime change. A late June Quinnipiac poll found sixty percent of voters believed the military action was not worth it, with sixty-two percent disapproving of the president's handling. Popescu also cites a recent Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis warning that the U.S. has fired more than a thousand Tomahawk missiles at Iran, a stockpile that will take until late 2030 to replenish, and that Patriot and THAAD interceptor inventories may not recover until the end of the decade. CSIS calls this a window of vulnerability for a potential Western Pacific conflict. Popescu's conclusion: every carrier strike group tied down in the Middle East is diverted from great-power competition with China, and the prudent path is a negotiated return to the status quo ante. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Wednesday, July 29th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. With the Iran War entering its 151st day, Netanyahu lands in Washington pressing Trump to expand strikes as gas prices climb and Houthi attacks rattle Saudi oil infrastructure. The once-solid Israel-Turkey partnership is fracturing into open rivalry, and analysts warn Washington should resist being pulled into another regional confrontation shaped by Israeli anxieties. Looking toward 2028, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Rand Paul each embody a rival vision—fusionism, populism, and libertarianism—that could complicate a Vance or Rubio coronation. and now for the details. We begin with the ongoing Iran War, now in its one hundred and fifty-first day. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Washington on Tuesday for his eighth meeting with President Trump this term, even as the recent pause in direct hostilities between the United States and Iran holds. President Trump used a Fox News interview to threaten strikes on Iran's Pickaxe Mountain facility if no deal is reached, telling the network, quote, "Bibi is telling me" about Pickaxe "because he wants me to stay involved." As Harrison Berger reports for The American Conservative, the Financial Times, citing a source briefed on the trip, says Netanyahu came to Washington to push for expanded operations against Iran, wanting the fight to be, quote, "about more than just Hormuz." The Prime Minister is also expected to raise objections to a possible U.S. sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey. Meanwhile, satellite imagery confirms damage to gas storage tanks at Saudi Arabia's Abqaiq facility, the world's largest crude processing plant, after a Houthi strike. Commercial traffic through the Bab el-Mandeb strait has slowed. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on television that Israel wants to strike Iran's energy targets, but the United States has not approved such strikes over concerns of a global oil crisis. Brent crude sat at eighty-seven dollars a barrel Tuesday morning. AAA put the national average price of regular gas at four dollars and ten cents. Staying with the region, the growing rupture between Israel and Turkey is drawing new scrutiny. Prime Minister Netanyahu has called Turkey's regional aspirations aggressive, and other Israeli officials have floated Turkey's removal from NATO. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has gone so far as to declare that, quote, "Turkey is the new Iran." As Mason Letteau Stallings writes for The American Conservative, this represents a striking reversal. Turkey was the first major Muslim-majority country to recognize Israel, and the two nations spent decades as strategic partners, cooperating on defense, trade, disaster relief, and in the Caucasus through their shared support for Azerbaijan. Stallings argues that the current shift follows a pattern Israel earlier ran against Iran. He cites analyst Trita Parsi, author of Treacherous Alliance, who notes that Israel's rivalry with Iran hardened in the 1990s not because of Iranian ideology, which was then moderating, but because the Soviet Union and Ba'athist Iraq had faded as common threats. With no buffers left, Iran's power itself became the problem. Parsi told the magazine that the same logic now applies to Turkey. As Iranian influence in the Levant has shriveled with the fall of Assad and the weakening of Hezbollah, and as Azerbaijan has decisively beaten Armenia, the glue holding Israel and Turkey together has dissolved. Stallings' conclusion for American policymakers is direct: Washington should not allow Israeli fears about a rising Turkey to shape U.S. decisions, and if tensions escalate further, the United States should stay well clear. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Tuesday, July 28th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Zelensky and Netanyahu arrive at the White House today as the Ukraine and Iran wars begin to merge—and Andrew Day argues both leaders should leave empty-handed. The Iran War enters day 150 with a fragile pause, munitions worries at the Pentagon, and Houthi drones still burning Saudi oil infrastructure. Maine Democrats overwhelmingly tap Troy Jackson to challenge Susan Collins in a race that could decide control of the Senate. and now for the details. Our lead story this morning: two foreign leaders arrive at the White House today, and the wars they're fighting are beginning to merge into one. On Saturday, Ukraine announced it had struck vessels in the Caspian Sea that it said were transporting Iranian-linked military cargo. Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi countered that Ukraine had actually hit an Iranian commercial vessel, killing a sailor, and warned the attack would not go unanswered. For now, Tehran has responded diplomatically, summoning a Ukrainian envoy, but Iran experts say military retaliation is likely. Hours after announcing the Caspian strike, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky alluded to intelligence suggesting Russia has been helping Iran target U.S. bases in the Middle East. Zelensky arrives at the White House today. So does Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will meet with President Trump for the eighth time this term. As Andrew Day reports for The American Conservative, the timing is not accidental. Day writes that Zelensky, who has struggled to win over a transactional President Trump, appears to be trying to showcase Ukraine's usefulness to Washington by tying his war effort to the Iran conflict. Day cites Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute, who argues Zelensky is attempting to merge the two conflicts to make America a belligerent in the Ukraine war. Day notes that Netanyahu stands to benefit from the same convergence. With the Iran War paused, and with MAGA voters cooling on it, a merger with the Ukraine conflict would, in Parsi's words, reframe war with Iran as defending Ukraine rather than defending Israel. Day writes that both men will arrive in Washington framing their asks as serving American interests, and that it is imperative, in his view, that both leave empty-handed. The Iran War entered its 150th day on Monday with both the United States and Iran holding fire, at least for now. The Associated Press reported that regional mediators had coaxed the two sides back toward negotiations, though Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei denied Tehran had requested any restart, telling reporters that negotiating with the U.S. is, quote, "not in our DNA." Harrison Berger, writing for TAC, reports that a return to hostilities is complicated by concerns over the Pentagon's munitions stockpile. According to a Wall Street Journal account cited by Berger, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Dan Caine believes munitions shortfalls would not preclude a resumption of major combat operations, but would add to the risk. Sources close to CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper indicated Cooper believes stepped-up American strikes could blunt Iran's missile response and offset limited stocks of Patriot interceptors. Berger also reports that Yemen's Houthis claimed responsibility for fresh drone attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure, with satellite imagery showing fires still burning at the Jazan oil plant more than two days after the strike. Brent crude settled at $90.20 a barrel Monday morning, and AAA put the national average price of regular gasoline at $4.11 a gallon. Turning to domestic politics. Maine Democrats have chosen former state senate president Troy Jackson as their nominee to challenge Republican Senator Susan Collins this fall. Jackson, a fifth-generation logger from northern Maine, won the special convention in Bangor by a lopsided vote of 566 to 5, ending a two-week scramble after the party's June primary winner, Graham Platner, ended his campaign amid sexual misconduct allegations. As Joseph Addington reports for The American Conservative, Jackson used his acceptance speech to hit health care, labor, and economic inequality, accusing the five-term incumbent Collins of failing to look out for everyday Mainers. Addington notes that with Republicans holding a narrow 53-to-47 Senate majority, this closely watched race could determine control of the upper chamber. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Monday, July 27th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. A U.S.–Iran pause enters a second night as depleted munitions, drone strikes on Erbil, and a mined tanker in the Strait of Hormuz push gas prices to $4.11 a gallon. The abrupt firing of Ukraine's defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov punctures the narrative that Kiev is turning the tide, exposing battlefield setbacks, entrenched corruption, and Zelensky's habit of sidelining rivals. and now for the details. We begin overseas, where the United States and Iran have paused their mutual strikes for a second consecutive night, as the Iran War enters its 149th day. A Pentagon official told CNN that operations against Iran are, quote, "on hold." Iran's army spokesman, Mohammad Akraminia, confirmed to Agence France-Presse that Tehran has also halted its retaliatory operations. As Harrison Berger reports for The American Conservative, CNN, citing anonymous sources, says Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Dan Caine and Vice President J.D. Vance warned President Trump on Friday that depleted U.S. munitions stockpiles make further offensive escalation risky. The pause also came just hours after U.S. forces in Erbil, Iraq, were targeted by drone attacks that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed destroyed, quote, "almost all" American military infrastructure in the city. The Iranian army spokesman warned in a video Sunday that the war would expand if Washington and Israel press ahead with further attacks. Meanwhile, an oil tanker exploded Sunday morning after colliding with a mine in the Strait of Hormuz. Omani negotiators have reportedly spent the weekend in Tehran seeking an agreement on the management of the strait. Tanker traffic through Hormuz has collapsed, with data firm Kpler reporting only two tankers crossed the strait on Friday. The consequences are being felt at home. AAA reports the average price of a gallon of regular gas now stands at $4.11. Turning to Ukraine, where the sudden firing of Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, just six months after his appointment in January, is raising fresh questions about the true state of the war. Writing for The American Conservative, Ted Snider and Nicolai Petro argue that the dismissal punctures the popular narrative that Ukraine, through drone innovation, has turned the tide against Russia. The facts on the ground, they say, do not bear this out. While Ukrainian drone strikes deep into Russia have caused problems for Moscow, they have not altered the calculus on the battlefront in eastern Ukraine. Russia has not suffered a monthly net loss of territory since the fall of 2023, and its grinding offensive in the Donbas continues. Snider and Petro report that Fedorov, the face of high-tech drone warfare, had blamed the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, for escalating battlefield losses. Syrskyi and other senior generals were unimpressed by Fedorov's drone strategy, favoring more traditional tactics, including casualty-heavy assaults. President Zelensky admitted the dispute had become untenable and sacked Fedorov, only to yield to a public backlash a week later and fire Syrskyi as well. The authors note that Fedorov had also stepped on powerful toes by terminating lucrative contracts with well-connected defense firms, uncovering billions in overspending. But perhaps his gravest sin, in Zelensky's eyes, was that his popularity as a reformer was beginning to make him look like a political threat. Snider and Petro place the firing in a pattern of sidelining potential rivals, from former commander Zaluzhnyi to intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov. The upshot, they conclude, is a challenge to the hopeful narrative about Ukraine's prospects, both in this war and in whatever comes next. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Sunday, July 26th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. The war against Iran enters day 148 with a rare pause in U.S. airstrikes, even as Houthi drones ignite Saudi Aramco facilities and Brent Crude closes near $98, pushing American gas prices to $4.11 a gallon. Scott Greer takes aim at "Nixonmaxxing," arguing the online right's new hero expanded affirmative action, created the EPA and Title IX, and gave America three of the four justices behind Roe—hardly the proto-Trumpian record his young fans imagine. Greer concludes that Nixon was a fascinating thinker and a solid foreign policy realist, but on domestic substance Reagan and Trump did far more to roll back the civil rights regime than the man now being idolized in viral hype edits. and now for the details. We begin with the war against Iran, now in its 148th day. For the first time since July 13th, U.S. Central Command reported no new airstrikes against Iran on Saturday, and Tehran also appears to have held its fire. President Trump told reporters Friday that the United States is, in his words, "talking to" the Iranians, and that they are "getting more and more serious as the days go by." He added that the American military remains, quote, "locked and loaded and ready to go." But the wider regional conflict is not cooling. The Houthis claimed responsibility for overnight missile and drone strikes on two Saudi Aramco oil facilities in the towns of Jizan and Yanbu, damaging buildings and infrastructure. The Houthis framed the attacks as retaliation for Saudi strikes on Yemen's Hodeidah port and Kamaran Island. Videos on social media showed fires still burning Saturday. Saudi Arabia responded with fresh airstrikes on Yemen, and the Houthis reaffirmed what they call a maritime embargo against the kingdom, warning of "escalation for escalation, blockade for blockade." Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi sought to distance Tehran from the fight, saying the Houthi-Saudi hostilities "cannot be attributed to Iran." As Harrison Berger reports for The American Conservative, the market is registering the strain. Brent Crude closed Friday at $98.38 a barrel, and AAA put the national average price of regular gasoline at $4.11 on Saturday—a direct cost of this open-ended conflict now landing at American gas pumps. Turning to the culture of the right itself: a new generation of conservatives has fallen for Richard Nixon. Hype videos of his speeches circulate on social media, young admirers call the trend "Nixonmaxxing," and outlets from the Wall Street Journal on down are chronicling the phenomenon. Prominent figures including Christopher Rufo, TAC executive director Curt Mills, and even the vice president have spoken warmly of the 37th president. Scott Greer takes a hard look at the myth in The American Conservative. Greer grants that Nixon has been unfairly maligned for decades, and that on foreign policy his record is genuinely impressive—ending the Vietnam War, opening China, splitting Moscow from Peking, and practicing a clear-eyed realism from which today's leaders could still learn. But Greer argues the domestic record does not match the hype. Nixon significantly broadened affirmative action, signed the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, created the framework of Title IX, and established the EPA. His wage and price controls worsened the stagflation of the 1970s. Of his four Supreme Court picks, only William Rehnquist proved reliably conservative; three of the four voted for Roe v. Wade, and three joined the mandated busing decision in Swann. Greer's conclusion is that Nixonmania is driven less by policy than by vibes—the search for a proto-Trumpian predecessor after the online right rejected Ronald Reagan. Nixon, Greer writes, was a fascinating man and a serious thinker, but an "okay" president whose actual accomplishments do not justify the current idolization. Reagan and Trump, he argues, did more to roll back the civil rights regime and reshape the country than Nixon ever did. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Saturday, July 25th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Britain's new prime minister Andy Burnham rolls out cost-of-living cuts and eyes nationalizing Thames Water, but Iain Macwhirter argues the "vibes" cannot disguise stagnant growth, mounting debt, and echoes of the 1970s IMF crisis. Fifty Senate Republicans, including Rand Paul, voted to advance an NDAA provision deepening U.S.-Israeli military integration — but Jack Hunter reports Paul's "yea" was a procedural move to unlock debate and amendments, not an endorsement. As the Iran War enters its 147th day, President Trump weighs further escalation and plans to tap seized Iranian funds for shipping damages, while Strait of Hormuz traffic collapses and a new Section 301 tariff regime targeting eighty countries takes effect. and now for the details. We begin with the Iran War, now in its 147th day. President Trump met this week with cabinet officials to weigh whether to further escalate the conflict, according to a New York Times report citing four anonymous sources. Meanwhile, Trump announced on Truth Social that he intends to use confiscated Iranian funds to cover damages to vessels attacked by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the Strait of Hormuz. He called the move, quote, "fair and equitable." Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi condemned the plan, warning that seizing another nation's assets to pay for unrelated future claims sets an incendiary precedent — and that once governments normalize confiscation, no one's assets are safe. As Harrison Berger reports for The American Conservative, the effects are rippling across global shipping. Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz fell about sixty percent on Thursday. And following the Houthis' declaration of a maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia, several insurers have told brokers they will no longer sell cargo insurance to Saudi-linked ships in the Red Sea. Brent Crude sits above ninety-six dollars a barrel, and the national average price of gasoline has climbed to four dollars and ten cents. Berger also notes that Prime Minister Netanyahu will visit the White House Tuesday — his seventh trip since Trump's second term began — and that, according to Reuters, China has initiated a push, now led by Pakistan, for new talks to end the war. On Capitol Hill, controversy continues over the National Defense Authorization Act, which authorizes more than one-point-one-five trillion dollars in new defense spending. A provision in both the House and Senate versions would significantly expand cooperation between the American and Israeli defense establishments. Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky tried to strip the provision from the House bill but was denied a vote, and the measure passed largely intact. In the Senate, fifty Republicans, including Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, voted to advance the bill — a move that drew heated criticism online, including from former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. As Jack Hunter reports for The American Conservative, Paul's critics are missing something crucial: the vote was procedural. Paul's senior advisor Doug Stafford told TAC that the senator opposes both the war Israel started with Iran and any integration of the two militaries, but that voting to proceed was the only way to open the bill to debate and amendment. Hunter, who once worked for Paul, notes this mirrors the approach long taken by Ron Paul — voting on rules to earn the right to offer pro-liberty amendments. Hunter also points out that Majority Leader John Thune, a staunch Israel hawk, voted no — a procedural maneuver that preserves his ability to bring the bill back up for another vote. The Trump administration has launched a new tariff regime, taking effect at one minute past midnight Friday. The move comes after the Supreme Court struck down the president's so-called Liberation Day tariffs, and follows the expiration of a stopgap measure. As Joseph Addington reports for The American Conservative, the new duties are imposed under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, and target eighty countries the administration says have failed to prohibit imports made with forced labor. Countries deemed to have made some progress — including India, Mexico, and the United Kingdom — will face a ten percent tariff. Goods from China, Australia, Japan, and dozens of other economies will be taxed at twelve-and-a-half percent. Oil, natural gas, fertilizer, and certain food products are exempted. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.

Good morning! Today is Friday, July 24th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. As oil surges past $100 and the House passes a war powers resolution, Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby struggles to defend an open-ended Iran campaign, asking the public for more time while dismissing concerns about depleted munitions. President Trump declares the newly unveiled Saudi civil nuclear deal contingent on Riyadh joining the Abraham Accords, though officials tell reporters normalization was never actually raised during negotiations. In Kiev, Zelensky's firing of a popular defense minister exposes a pattern of sidelining capable rivals, exploding Western fantasies about Ukraine's democratic resilience. and now for the details. We begin with the war in Iran, now in its 146th day. Brent crude oil surged past 100 dollars a barrel Thursday, rising 7.4 percent, after a twelfth consecutive night of American strikes on Iranian targets. Iran responded with strikes against Jordan and Kuwait. AAA reports the national average price of regular gasoline has climbed to 4 dollars and 9 cents. Adding to the pressure, Yemen's Houthis have declared a maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia, claiming missile and drone attacks on two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea. Shipping tracker Kpler reports confirmed crude transits through the Strait of Hormuz have dropped 75 percent. President Trump told Axios he is "considering a massive attack, bigger than ever before." On Capitol Hill, four House Republicans joined Democrats to pass a war powers resolution 214 to 208, directing the president to halt the war, citing the lack of congressional approval. As Harrison Berger reports for The American Conservative, the vote signals growing bipartisan unease as the conflict enters its fifth month with no clear endpoint. Staying with the war, Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon's undersecretary of defense for policy, sat down this week with the New York Times' Ross Douthat to defend the administration's Iran strategy. Colby, once known as the architect of a China-first defense posture that treated the Persian Gulf as a secondary theater, is now tasked with selling an open-ended Middle Eastern campaign. Jude Russo, writing for The American Conservative, examines the interview closely. Russo notes that Colby waved off concerns about depleted munitions stockpiles, telling listeners the most significant capabilities are not in scarce supply, but declining to offer specifics. On the question of whether the war has become a stalemate, Colby offered only that "it remains to be seen." He asked for more time for the strategy—military force combined with sanctions and diplomatic pressure—to bear fruit. Russo argues that appeals to sanctions ring hollow given their long track record of failing to alter Iranian behavior, and that the stated war aims—denying a nuclear weapon and degrading Iran's military—commit the United States to what analysts call "mowing the grass" indefinitely. Russo's assessment: if this is the smartest case that can be made for the current course, it is not a reassuring one. President Trump announced on Truth Social Thursday that the recently unveiled civil nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia is "totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords." The agreement, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, would allow the kingdom to receive nuclear power reactors and possibly a domestic uranium enrichment facility, built by American firms. According to the reporting, Riyadh would not be required to submit to the International Atomic Energy Agency's Additional Protocol on inspections. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the normalization condition. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has repeatedly said his country will pursue a nuclear weapon if Iran obtains one. Harrison Berger reports for The American Conservative that when reporters asked why Saudi Arabia should be permitted a nuclear program while Iran is not, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the deal "absolutely puts America first." Berger notes that one current and one former U.S. official told Middle East Eye that normalization with Israel was never mentioned as a condition during the actual negotiations. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.