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by ian bremmer
Elon Musk in an America Party hat.
“Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom,” he announced a day after President Donald Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), the deficit-busting tax-and-spend package that Musk had blasted as a “disgusting abomination.” The megabill that broke the bromance will add an estimated $3-4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade thanks to large tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, increased spending (especially for defense and homeland security), and higher debt interest payments, making what’s already an unsustainable fiscal situation much worse. If some of the law’s now-temporary provisions are eventually made permanent, as this bill did for the 2017 “temporary” tax cuts, the total cost could be as much as $6 trillion. “When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” Elon wrote on X.
What exactly does the America Party stand for? Details are scarce, but Musk says his goal is to disrupt the uniparty’s hold over American politics and reduce federal deficits (oh, and uncover the real Jeffrey Epstein story) – for real this time. Elon went all-in on support for Trump in 2024, who in return installed him to lead the Department of Government Efficiency’s efforts to slash government spending. Himself a disruptor of the uniparty, President Trump has broken with bipartisan consensus on immigration and foreign policy, tightening border enforcement and actually trying to end foreign wars (even if not very effectively). But Trump has governed like a card-carrying uniparty member when it comes to expanding the size and cost of government.
This grievance is the core driver behind Musk’s creation of the America Party. He was right to ask ‘what the heck was the point of DOGE’ once the OBBBA’s debt blowout was codified – although in fairness to Trump, DOGE did deliver less than $175 billion in “savings,” a rounding error in the overall federal budget and far short of the $2 trillion in “waste, fraud, and abuse” Musk had promised to cut initially. Even before the ink dried, the bill was polling deep underwater with the American people. But most voters hate the OBBBA not because it increases the deficit and debt, but despite it. By revealed preference, voters support politicians who spend on them and punish those who threaten their benefits or raise their taxes. It’s no wonder that the biggest wealth transfer from the working class to the top 1% in modern US history, which kicks more than 10 million Americans off Medicaid to make the rich richer, is so deeply unpopular. But fiscal discipline? That has had no real constituency in our spend-happy nation – and, accordingly, no home in either major party – for a very long time.
The America Party faces a product-market-fit problem that everyone but Elon seems to recognize. Most voters claim to be deficit hawks in the abstract – it sounds so serious and responsible! – but few support the broad-based tax increases and spending cuts on everything from entitlements and healthcare to defense, education, and border security that balancing the budget entails in real life.
If Elon wanted to create a party that represents the interests of “the 80%” of Americans “in the middle” and not just a fringe of too-online libertarians, its platform would have to consist of higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations, cheaper healthcare, childcare, energy, and housing, congressional term limits and lobbying reform, common-sense gun regulations, comprehensive immigration reform, and other such policies supported by bipartisan majorities. Some positions may be accommodated by one or the other major party, whether now or in the future. It’s even possible that there may exist a majority for an economically populist, socially moderate third party today. But there’s definitely no popular appetite for the kind of America Party that Elon has in mind.
So, does that mean that Elon is going to fail? Not necessarily ... but probably.
On the one hand, unlimited funds plus razor‑thin congressional majorities equal mischief potential. We’re talking about the wealthiest dude in the world perhaps being willing to throw a blank checkbook at America’s coin-operated political system. Musk poured nearly $300 million into GOP campaigns in 2024 and happily spent over $20 million on a single Wisconsin Supreme Court race earlier this year. And while he’s highly unlikely to be able to get America Party candidates elected to Congress, he may not need to. Musk could plausibly influence primaries, spoil close races, and force Republicans to tack (slightly) toward fiscal discipline. His stated goal of controlling “2 or 3 Senate seats and 8-10 House districts” by 2026 sounds modest until you remember that four Senate races and 11 House contests were decided by under two points in 2024. In a 50‑50 nation, margins that slim turn even a 2% spoiler vote into real leverage. And if he’s willing to burn, say, $250 million coaxing ten safe‑seat incumbent Republicans to switch jerseys, he could build himself a small blocking coalition in the House with veto power over key legislation before voters ever see the America Party on a ballot.
On the other hand, not even Musk’s eyewatering fortune is likely to be able to override the laws of political physics that have humbled every third‑party crusader before him. America’s deep-rooted two-party presidential system is designed to strangle third parties in their crib: first-past-the-post, winner-take-all elections herd voters into two big tents, and state ballot-access and federal campaign-finance laws pose formidable entry barriers even for someone with Musk’s resources. Worse still, there are fewer true independent voters than polls suggest: most Americans who dislike both major parties (and there are many of us) tend to hold their noses and often vote for one of them, fearing “wasting” their ballot. The few voters out there who actually affiliate with neither party and are open to voting for a third party don’t agree on much with one another – certainly not on an uncompromising commitment to austerity. Musk may soon discover that building a successful third-party bid in America, especially one centered around Making Fiscal Responsibility Great Again, is not rocket science … it’s harder.
Then there’s Elon himself – a wellspring of liabilities matched only by the depth of his pockets. There’s no denying that he’s a generationally talented entrepreneur and an incredibly hard worker, but the mercurial billionaire’s popularity trails even Trump’s, his attention span is legendarily short for ventures that aren’t core to making him money, and he has a history of not following through on his most outlandish and overconfident promises. Leading a political party will cost him a fortune, distract from his business activities and humanity-saving mission, end in failure and frustration, and otherwise make his life more difficult than it needs to be.
This is especially true if President Trump reacts as viciously against Musk’s betrayal as I expect him to. Should he decide that Musk’s America Party threatens not just MAGA’s political agenda but his personal spotlight, there’s no telling how far he’ll be willing to go to punish him – and to what extent he will be constrained by the rule of law in doing so. Based solely on what Trump has gotten away with doing to other people who have harmed him far less grievously, Musk’s federal contracts, tax subsidies, even his security clearance and US citizenship could be on the chopping block. That risk alone may deter Elon from sticking with this effort for very long, and would-be recruits (many already skeptical about Elon’s long-term commitment to the bit) from joining it.
Musk may yet scare a few vulnerable incumbents or win over the handful of principled libertarians like Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), but the structural logic of US politics still points to a binary choice in 2026 and 2028. If the history of US third parties is any guide, his latest moonshot will flame out faster than a Tesla battery. Even in the strongest-case scenario, the America Party is likely to end up looking more like a successful pressure group – something closer to the Tea Party, the Club for Growth, or the Sierra Club – than an electable third party.
Of course, the man who builds reusable rockets and is landing them on barges in the middle of the ocean thrives on low-probability bets. So keep an eye on the launchpad and enjoy the show. After all, even if the party fizzles, Musk is always sure to deliver the one thing Americans consistently reward: entertainment value.
Zohran Mamdani was a long shot. But the 33-year-old democratic socialist state assemblyman flew past former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s name recognition and money advantage to win the Democratic primary for New York mayor last week.
On paper, the upset may seem like a parochial story of quirky turnout math and a uniquely flawed opponent in a city so blue it’d elect a Smurf. In reality, Mamdani’s victory is a canary in the coal mine, less for what it says about him and New York politics than the conditions that made his message land. Dismissing it as an intramural oddity misses the broader point: when voters believe the deck is stacked against them, they look for candidates who promise to reshuffle it.
First, a reality check: There’s no guarantee Mamdani will win in November. Only registered Democrats vote in primaries, and the general electorate is a different animal. Moreover, while New York is reliably blue, big outside money is lining up against him, so it remains plausible (even if not super likely) that he could lose to an independent candidate.
Nobody knows how Mamdani would govern if he wins, either. He could push the policies he ran on, some of which could create a crisis if enacted. In the worst-case scenario, they could result in capital flight, plummeting tax revenue, worsened public services, rising crime, and a host of other ills that would make the greatest city in the world slightly less great. (Though none of that would make me consider relocating my home and company HQ. Moose is up for anything.)
But Mamdani will also be a first-time executive constrained by Albany’s veto power and the tough realities and tradeoffs of city management. I wouldn’t be shocked if he governed more pragmatically than he campaigned. He’s already ditched some of his more controversial positions such as “defund the police,” and he’s shown a willingness to engage and evolve. He’s clearly a skilled and ambitious politician who wants to have a successful career in this business; to achieve this, he needs to be popular and win elections, and that means being seen as having done a decent job as mayor. If he does things that make New York’s tax base flee the city, crime go up, and public services fall apart, he will be seen as a failure. As Fiorello LaGuardia said, “There is no Democratic or Republican way to pick up garbage.”
Ultimately, though, how and what Mamdani does in the future is almost beside the point. Nothing will change the fact that he won the primary with an unabashedly far-left, economically populist, soak-the-rich message in the beating heart of global capitalism. New York is simultaneously one of the wealthiest and least affordable cities in America (and the world). Mamdani’s campaign was focused on slashing the cost of living and improving the quality of life for regular New Yorkers, promising a $30 minimum wage, free buses and childcare, city-owned grocery stores to slash food prices, rent controls on stabilized apartments, and higher taxes on the rich and corporations to pay for it all.
In the America I grew up in, this kind of platform would’ve been DOA, and Mamdani would’ve long been ostracized from polite society. The only political label that’s historically been more toxic than “socialist” is “communist.” Everyone knows that’s about as un-American as it gets, which is why Donald Trump calls anyone to his left a communist, from Mamdani to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris.
But here’s the thing: the slurs only carry weight if people still see the United States as capitalist. Increasingly, they don’t. The United States looks less like a free‑market meritocracy – the kind with equal opportunity, open competition, rags-to-riches possibility – and more like a pay‑to‑play kleptocracy where access and advantage are auctioned to the highest bidder.
When Mamdani said that “billionaires shouldn’t exist,” he wasn’t threatening to line them up at dawn, but rather just to tax them down to size – at least as long as the playing field looks as tilted as it presently does in the United States. A growing number of Americans, those for whom the American Dream is the stuff of history books and “socialism” gives more Sweden vibes than Cuba, are on board for that.
Socialists may still not be able to beat capitalists, but if voters conclude that America has devolved into a two-tier system that rewards proximity to power more than hard work, don’t be surprised when a Ugandan-born millennial socialist like Mamdani has a shot against oligarchs and kleptocrats.
This country’s last successful populist wave started with a Queens real-estate showman promising to blow up business as usual. Trump won the White House twice on the back of voters who believed that democracy was broken and the game had been rigged against average Americans by coastal elites and the “deep state.” He’s spent a decade blaming global trade and immigration for working‑class pain, to reasonable success. But when it comes to “draining the swamp,” Trump has done anything but. Instead, he has expanded the swamp – and I’m not just talking about the new Alligator Alcatraz he's so excited about. Now Republicans in Congress are ramming through the One Big Beautiful Bill, which is set to be the largest wealth transfer from the poor to the rich in modern US history and will burden future generations with trillions in additional debt. Talk about class warfare.
If you’re 25, saddled with student loans, priced out of housing, and watching Trump cut the social safety net you’re paying into to fund tax cuts for his billionaire friends and cronies, soaking the rich increasingly looks not just like common sense but like self-defense. It’s no wonder Mamdani’s message resonated.
And I suspect the demand for what he’s selling will only grow in the coming years. Advances in artificial intelligence threaten massive job losses among white-collar workers. The backlash this time around will be driven not by blue-collar, working-class men in the Rust Belt but by priced-out urban professionals with advanced degrees and politically active suburban moms whose over-educated, under-employed children won’t have the opportunities they thought they would. Trump’s protectionist, anti-immigrant crusade won’t win over that crowd. Establishment Democrats haven’t come up with a good answer yet, either.
This doesn’t necessarily mean Mamdani himself is about to become the left’s new Trump. The fact is Mamdani is everything Trump wished Obama could’ve been: actually born in Africa, actually a Muslim, and actually a (democratic) socialist. That may be a winning combo in Brooklyn coffee shops and parts of the Bronx; color me skeptical it plays out as well in swing districts across the country. But the policy lane Mamdani has staked out – call it “anti-kleptocratic economic populism” – is wide open for someone with more national appeal to speed through it.
CEOs should worry less about Mamdani and more about the energy he’s tapping into. Those who mistake lobbying spend for sound strategy will one day wake to find themselves the targets of bipartisan populist pitchforks. If companies don’t start embracing genuinely open competition and mainstream politics remain unable to fix the optics of a rigged game, voters will send outsiders to rewrite the rules for them.
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Trump, Netanyahu, and
Then, on Monday, the Iranians responded as I said they would a week ago and in my conversation with TED’s Helen Walters the morning after the US strikes. Tehran launched a well-telegraphed, symbolic missile salvo against Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest US military base in the region and the most heavily fortified within striking range of Iran. This sprawling air base, home to 10,000 American troops, is in the middle of the desert, far away from civilian areas, and bristling with missile defenses. Tehran gave the US advance warning via Qatar to minimize the potential for casualties and damage. It had to put on enough of a show to convince folks at home it had punched back, while hoping Trump would take the hint and refrain from retaliating.
It wasn’t either side’s first rodeo. At the end of his first term, Trump ordered the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, the popular war hero and head of the Iranian defense forces. Iran’s response then? A performative, pre-announced missile attack against a US base in Iraq that had minimal impact. Trump ignored it, both sides declared victory, and the whole thing blew over.
The same choreography played out this week. With ample warning of the impending missile strike, the US evacuated nonessential personnel and ordered everyone else to shelter in place. Not a single person was hurt. Just like last time,Tehran sold the fireworks to its people as a major success, claiming they had "destroyed" the US base. Most Iranians – under an internet blackout – were none the wiser that the attack had been a dud by design. Engineered to cause no deaths, no damage, just theater.
Trump sprinted for the exit ramp, eager to wrap things up and avoid the political risks of a further US military commitment he never wanted in the first place. Instead of retaliating, he thanked Iran (yes, really) for the “early notice.” Two hours later, he announced that he had brokered a “Complete and Total CEASEFIRE” between Iran and Israel. The “12 Day War”, as he dubbed it, was over. “CONGRATULATIONS WORLD, IT’S TIME FOR PEACE!” he posted.
The ceasefire almost collapsed before it even went into effect, with Israel launching air strikes on Tehran and Iran responding with a missile barrage on Israel early Tuesday. A clearly annoyed Trump said he was "not happy with Israel" and urged Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu to stand down in all-caps. It was a rare public rebuke from Israel’s best friend on the global stage. But if there’s one thing that pisses Trump off, it’s being made to look weak.
The US president has staked his reputation on this fragile ceasefire holding. Trump wants a clean win. He cares about being seen as powerful and in control, about low oil prices, and about ending wars and keeping the US out of them. A resumption of the fighting would jeopardize all that. That’s why he (successfully) pressured Israel to scale back planned strikes against Iran on Tuesday, and why he’ll keep trying to discourage either side from taking actions that might restart the war.
For the time being, everyone seems content to declare victory and keep the peace.
That includes Iran, the undisputed loser of the 12-Day War. Everything about how the conflict played out was a display of Iranian weakness. Of the three belligerents, Iran is by far the least capable and most vulnerable – and it is keenly aware of it. But the loss of all its deterrents also makes it the most risk-averse. Tehran’s goal has always been regime survival, not victory. And the Islamic Republic can indeed claim it survived a direct war against both Israel and the US while inflicting unprecedented pain on the Israeli home front and preserving key parts of its nuclear program. Khamenei has been humiliated and his days as supreme leader may well be numbered, but the regime gets to live to fight another day, even if weakened. A ceasefire gives Tehran breathing room to focus on internal security and a chance to rebuild its capabilities.
For his part, Netanyahu wasn’t particularly interested in a ceasefire – certainly not as much as the Iranians or Trump. But Bibi already got more than he could’ve hoped for out of this war. He dealt a massive blow to Iran’s military, ballistic, and nuclear capabilities. He got the US to strike at the one hardened site Israel couldn’t reach. And he did it all while keeping Trump onside and bolstering his domestic political standing. In the course of two weeks, he went from the brink of government collapse to nigh untouchable.
As for Trump, this is arguably the biggest foreign policy win of his second term to date. The president can take credit for degrading Iran’s nuclear program and enabling Israel to severely degrade its military and ballistic capabilities, all with no blowback to the US and without getting dragged into a broader war. True, Iran had never been weaker and its threats had never been emptier, but Trump still had the willingness to call the ayatollah’s bluff. And so far, the gamble seems to have paid off. One of the world’s most dangerous rogue states is significantly weaker today than it was two weeks ago (not to mention before Oct 7, 2023), and America is no worse for wear.
But how big a win this turns out to be in the longer term remains an open question.
For starters, it’s unclear just how much of Iran’s nuclear program was actually destroyed. Trump insists Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan were “obliterated” … as he would. Iran says most of its enrichment capabilities survived the attacks and its 400-kilogram stockpile of highly-enriched uranium – enough for 9-10 warheads – was moved to secure locations in advance … as they would. But a leaked early assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency found that the strikes failed to destroy Iran’s nuclear sites and only set back the program by a few months. And preliminary Israeli damage assessments have also cast doubt on the effectiveness of the Fordow strike, estimating the setback to the Iranian nuclear program at two years.
The IAEA isn’t sure, unless Iran lets them into the facilities. It’s plausible that the bulk of Iran’s fissile material stockpile was saved. Satellite photos show truck convoys outside Fordow days before the strikes, and moving uranium is fairly easy. Not so for centrifuges, which are large, fragile, and hard to transport. Maybe Iran managed to move a few. But thousands? Unlikely. Which means that even if Iran’s stockpile survived intact, its ability to enrich to weapons-grade level has probably taken a hit. They also lost their uranium conversion facility at Isfahan – critical for processing uranium “yellowcake” into the metallic and gaseous forms needed to produce a bomb.
Even if it turned out that the program was severely degraded, Iran could rebuild it in secret. The US-Israeli strikes may have slowed the timeline to a bomb by six months to several years, but they also multiplied Iran’s motivation to get one. If you’re sitting in Tehran, the lesson from this war is simple: being a nuclear-threshold power is not enough – the only way to avoid being bombed is to become un-bombable.
Strategically, that makes the US-Israeli tactical victory potentially counterproductive. That’s the thing: the military option was never a permanent solution to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. That was true before this war and it’s true now. You can bomb the program back a few years, but unless you’re prepared to keep bombing them indefinitely, the only real way to stop Iran from building a nuke is to get them to sign a deal.
Trump came into office this term understanding that diplomacy was the way to go. He had a real shot at success, too. Iran’s historic weakness post-Oct. 7 made it ripe for a reasonable negotiated agreement – meaning anything short of zero enrichment with at least some upside. If he had offered limited (but non-zero) domestic enrichment for civilian purposes, no sunset clauses, and sanctions relief, the Iranians probably would’ve taken it. Alas, he was unwilling to budge on zero enrichment and ultimately got pushed into a corner by the Israeli strikes to take the military route instead.
It may work out in the short term – the only term Trump usually cares about (which is a bigger, more structural problem). Long term? It’s likely to push Iran to go all-in on covertly acquiring a nuclear deterrent to ensure regime survival. That would take time – they need to rebuild underground facilities, reconstitute their centrifuges, enrich in secret. But it would happen out of the IAEA’s sight and beyond easy reach. We’d likely only find out when we were presented with a fait accompli: a working bomb.
Netanyahu has already warned that Israel will strike again if it detects any Iranian attempts to rebuild its program. Even if Tehran doesn’t dash for a bomb, Israel intends to continue “mowing the grass” in Iran whenever threats and opportunities arise, as it has in Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon. “We have concluded a significant chapter, but the campaign against Iran is not over,” the IDF chief said yesterday.
Trump won’t love his ceasefire getting broken. But the real question is, what’s he going to do to stop it? And the answer is probably not much. He’s willing to lean on Israel for now to declare mission accomplished and claim the W. But he won’t stick his neck out to rein in Bibi forever. And if the fighting resumes, Trump will back Israel regardless of whether it’s Israel who starts it.
The 12-Day War is over, but the story will be continued.
Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Israel’s war plan has led directly to this juncture (though Trump’s own decision to tear up the 2015 nuclear agreement in 2018 arguably paved the way). The culmination of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decades-long crusade to neutralize Iran’s nuclear threat to the Jewish state, ‘Operation Rising Lion’ began early on June 13 with Hollywood-worthy sabotage to disable Iranian air defenses, followed by the largest airstrikes on Iranian territory since the 1980-88 conflict with Iraq.
The Israel Defense Forces have since methodically destroyed significant portions of Iran’s missile launchpads, drone factories, and above-ground nuclear facilities. They have decimated its military leadership. They have gone after its domestic energy production and industrial capacity. On June 16, the IDF announced it achieved full air supremacy over Tehran, meaning Israeli planes can now fly over Iran’s capital without getting shot down – an extraordinary statement of facts on the ground.
Iran has been unable to mount much of an effective response. It has fired hundreds of missiles and drones against Israeli population centers, but very few projectiles (under 5 percent) have penetrated Israel’s layered defenses. Though these barrages have caused damage to mostly residential buildings and killed scores of Israeli civilians, as Tehran’s ballistic stockpile has started to dwindle, each wave has been smaller than the last. Israel’s advantage is only set to grow the longer the war goes on.
Yet the Israeli campaign has a hole. Despite severe damage inflicted upon Iranian capabilities and escalation dominance, Israel cannot achieve its chief war aim on its own: destroying Iran’s nuclear program. The partial degradation of the Natanz, Isfahan, and Parchin nuclear facilities, along with the assassination of 14 of Tehran’s top nuclear scientists, have set it back by months. But crucially, the Fordow enrichment plant, which sits more than 300ft beneath earth and reinforced concrete, remains out of Israel’s reach. Only the US Air Force’s Massive Ordnance Penetrators, or bunker-buster bombs, can “finish the job.”
Israel can and will continue to hammer at Iran’s other nuclear, missile, and military infrastructure for weeks (if not months), but a war that ends with Fordow guarantees that Tehran retains the means to redouble its efforts to acquire a bomb once the smoke clears. Israel’s only path to victory therefore runs through President Trump.
Early on, Trump drew a clear red line: American forces would stay out unless Iran escalated directly against American interests, such as by attacking US military bases or interfering with shipping through the strategic chokepoint of the Strait of Hormuz. The president ran as a peacemaker, promising to end foreign wars and keep US troops out of them. To his credit, he has tried – he just hasn’t been very effective at it. Even after sanctioning Israel’s June 13 operation, he still insisted the US had nothing to do with it and urged the Iranians to return to the negotiating table, despite being frustrated at their continued refusal to compromise.
But over the last few days, signs have emerged that the president’s position has shifted. On June 15, Trump said “it’s possible we could get involved.” The day after, on Monday, he issued a cryptic warning to Tehran’s 10 million residents to “immediately evacuate” the city. And on Tuesday, he implicitly threatened to assassinate Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and called for Iran’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” (all caps assuredly not mine).
In tandem, the Trump administration and the MAGA media apparatus started laying the political groundwork for a one-off US strike, making the case to the isolationist wing of the GOP that one-off airstrikes – as opposed to boots on the ground and long-term occupation – to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons are not only consistent with the president’s “America First” approach, but necessary to achieve his “peace through strength” vision. Even Vice President JD Vance, a vocal critic of US military intervention in the Middle East and the cabinet’s leading isolationist, echoed the new party line.
Trump has reportedly not made up his mind yet. He said today that it’s not “too late” for Iran to avoid a US attack if it agrees to give up its nuclear program. But as Israel and Iran exchange blows for the seventh day, the president could give the go-ahead to strike any second now. The retaliatory threat to US forces in Iraq should give him pause; two dozen ballistic missiles or sustained short-range rocket fire could overwhelm the air defenses shielding American bases in close proximity to Iran. A single successful barrage causing American fatalities could trap the United States in another open-ended quagmire. Ultimately, though, the perceived upside – encouraged by Netanyahu – of going down in history as the guy who eliminated the Iranian nuclear threat is likely to prove too tempting to pass up on. The US military has already deployed enough air and naval assets to the region to enable a strike and defend against potential retaliation.
Despite last-ditch efforts from both sides to avert a direct clash, Tehran looks unlikely to capitulate; Khamenei swore as much today. The leadership’s priority is regime survival, with domestic enrichment viewed as a cornerstone of the regime’s long-term survival strategy – the ultimate insurance policy against a Libya-style overthrow. Surrendering the nuclear program under threat of US bombardment would sacrifice long-term deterrence and legitimacy for the sake of short-term respite – a “poisoned chalice” even more bitter than Khamenei’s predecessor Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1988 decision to accept a ceasefire with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. While devastating, enduring the loss of Fordow would at least allow the regime to live to fight another day and perhaps even rebuild the nuclear program in secret once the dust settles.
With Iranian capitulation all but ruled out and no other clear off-ramp for Trump to walk back his ultimatum, the likely outcome is a US strike on Fordow in the coming days. Tehran would face growing pressure to retaliate against US bases, Gulf energy infrastructure, and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz (through which 20% of the global oil supply flows) to restore deterrence and maintain credibility at home. But, fire and brimstone rhetoric notwithstanding, a weakened regime in survival mode will probably (read: hopefully) refrain from purposefully broadening the conflict further, especially in ways that would force it to fight a three-front war against Israel, the US, and the Gulf Arab states. Iran might opt to harass oil shipping and local export facilities instead, possibly leaning on its proxies, while stopping short of measures that invite major retaliation. Trump, for his part, shows little appetite to indulge Netanyahu’s regime-change fantasies.
The greater danger lies in the fog of war. Israeli decapitation strikes have fractured Iran’s chain of command; even if the consensus among the decision-makers is to proceed cautiously, a rogue Revolutionary Guard faction might decide to take matters into its own hands and shoot at US barracks, or a wayward missile could hit an oil tanker and blow $120-a-barrel crude into the global economy. The longer the conflict runs, the higher the odds of unintended escalation. And if it’s backed into a corner, such as via overt Israeli or American attempts to induce regime change (no matter how likely to fail and/or backfire), Iran can always decide to raise the stakes, retaliation risks be damned.
President Trump could well still pull back from the brink. Just hours ago, he said to reporters at the White House, “I may do it, I may not do it." The option for the United States to take out Fordow won’t go away in a month or six. At this point in time, it will unnecessarily put American troops at risk, and it won’t result in regime change. In fact, it’s more likely to rally Iranians around the flag, empower hardliners, accelerate clandestine nuclear activities, and create pressure for prolonged American involvement. It would be smarter to allow Israel to continue degrading Iranian nuclear, missile, and military capabilities while setting back its nuclear program many months further.
But evidence suggests Trump is about to pull the trigger. When he does, headlines will hail an American-Israeli triumph. The true picture will be more mixed: Iran’s nuclear program shattered but not permanently destroyed, its regime weakened but not dead; the United States deeper in a conflict it vowed to avoid; and Israel confronting a mortal enemy whose resolve to acquire nuclear arms will only intensify. The Middle East will be 16 centrifuge cascades weaker but no closer to peace.
On Saturday, US President Donald Trump activated 2,000 members of the California National Guard to quell protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation efforts in Los Angeles, after small but highly visible demonstrations had popped up across the city in the days prior – with some instances of violence, opportunistic looting, and property damage. California Governor Gavin Newsom disputed that federal intervention was necessary and condemned Trump’s deployment decision as illegal and inflammatory, blaming it for stoking the protests.
Though the protests had largely petered out by then, on Tuesday the president dispatched an additional 2,000-plus National Guard troops and 700 active-duty Marines to the area. Downtown LA had a quiet night on the back of a curfew, but anti-ICE (and, more broadly, anti-Trump) demonstrations have started to spread to other major cities like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Austin, Dallas, and Atlanta, with more planned in Las Vegas, Minneapolis, San Antonio, and Seattle. Texas Governor Greg Abbot has already called in the National Guard ahead of any potential unrest in his state.
Here are my eight key takeaways:
- Trump’s decision to send federal troops into Los Angeles was extreme. It marked the first time in 60 years that the National Guard had been deployed to a US state without the consent of its governor. The last such instance was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson federalized the Alabama Guard in defiance of Governor George Wallace, one of the nation’s leading segregationists, to protect civil rights demonstrators led by Martin Luther King Jr. from violence. Needless to say, federal supremacy over states’ rights is being asserted in a very different context, by a very different president, and in service of a very different goal today.
- It’s legal – for now. Trump’s deployment pushes the envelope politically, but as long as the troops limit their role to protecting federal personnel and facilities while refraining from taking law-enforcement actions (as they reportedly have thus far), it will stay within the bounds of presidential authority. That’s a key legal distinction, as the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act bars active-duty forces from engaging in domestic law enforcement unless the president invokes the 1807 Insurrection Act. That’s a step Trump hasn’t taken (yet at least), suggesting that he still sees as high a bar for it as he did during the George Floyd protests in 2020.
- The door is open to a more radical use of emergency powers. The counterpoint is that Trump referred to the LA protesters as a “violent insurrectionist mob” (he does know a little something about those) and on Tuesday refused to take the invocation of the Insurrection Act off the table. He also warned that any protesters at this weekend’s military parade in Washington, DC – peaceful or not – “will be met with very big force,” and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth hinted at a desire to use military forces on domestic soil more extensively going forward. This pattern suggests that Trump’s threshold for activating emergency powers or using troops against Americans is lower than last time around, when he was repeatedly talked out of extreme steps by institutionalist advisors. I wouldn’t be shocked if the administration invoked the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (aka IEEPA, the same law it used to levy reciprocal tariffs on Liberation Day) to freeze the assets of individual American citizens and organizations it accused of aiding and abetting “foreign invaders” (aka undocumented aliens). Or if it used the Communications Act to pressure internet platforms into throttling protest-related content. These scenarios may sound far-fetched, but so did the unilateral deployment of the National Guard and Marine Corps to Los Angeles less than 200 days into the first year of the Trump presidency. In his second term, Trump has proven willing to push the legal and political limits of executive power, against precedent and despite long odds of success.
- Trump’s LA deployment was designed to score political points, not restore peace. The City of Los Angeles was unaffected by the protests, which were confined to a handful of downtown city blocks. The Los Angeles Police Department had things under control (at least until Trump escalated the situation), and local officials saw no reason to request federal help. In fact, they warned that adding federal troops to the mix would risk heightening tensions and endanger public safety. But Trump wasn’t trying to solve a security problem – he was playing politics.
- Trump is eager to pick public fights over immigration. This is the one issue area where the president has had consistently positive approval ratings, save for a brief dip underwater caused by the administration’s mishandling of the Abrego Garcia case. For Trump, the political upside of doubling down on the migrant crackdown is twofold. First, it shifts attention toward his biggest strength and away from headlines that are more problematic for the administration, such as his failure to secure trade deals, his inability to end the Russia-Ukraine war, and his messy breakup with Elon Musk. Second, it forces Democrats into defending politically unsympathetic targets and positions, much like they did with Abrego Garcia (before the White House overplayed its hand) and Harvard University.
- The optics of the LA protests play straight into Trump’s hands. Images of burning Waymos and protestors flying Mexican flags lend credence to the White House’s false claim that undocumented immigrants are dangerous foreign invaders and their defenders are radical anti-American traitors, allowing the president to discredit opponents of mass deportations as threats to public order and safety. That only a small number of troublemakers were illegal aliens doesn’t matter; Trump is betting (correctly, in my view) those visuals will drive public opinion away from the demonstrators and toward more aggressive deportation policies.
- More deportations are coming. Trump has made measurable progress in curbing illegal border crossings, but so far, deportations have fallen far short of his campaign pledge (and even of deportations during Joe Biden’s last year in office). That’s not surprising; large-scale interior removals are much more politically, economically, and logistically fraught than border enforcement. But according to the Wall Street Journal, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller recently ordered ICE to step up its game, demanding that they stop targeting migrants with criminal records, asylum requests, and court petitions and instead “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens” at their jobs and schools. In other words, snag anyone who looks illegal, no probable cause (let alone warrant) needed. That approach was reportedly what sparked the LA protests last week. The backlash was instrumental to Miller’s goals: by signaling that Trump is making good on his deportation promise, standoffs with law enforcement can make deportations more popular and give Trump the political capital to ramp up more visible and disruptive workplace and neighborhood raids, particularly in Democratic-run cities. These operations will trigger more protests, which will in turn be met with more repression and stepped-up enforcement, and so on.
- On immigration, don’t bet on TACO. Trump faces fewer internal constraints in implementing his policy agenda on immigration than in any other area. Unless and until it starts dragging on his approval ratings, he is likely to double down: more aggressive raids, more confrontations with Democratic governors and mayors, more troop deployments to quell public protests. Mass deportations will disrupt local life in places like Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Chicago. Backlash to aggressive enforcement tactics, family separations, and mistaken detentions will be the primary source of domestic unrest in the coming months, but Trump won’t back down. This is a fight the White House is happy to fight.
Trump's deployment of troops to Los Angeles was less about taking control of the streets and more about taking control of the narrative. The strategy is confrontational by design, with immigrants and Democrats as foils and civil unrest as a feature, not a bug. This playbook may work politically. But in the long term, the result will be more conflict: between cities and Washington, between red and blue, between civilians and the military, and between competing visions of American identity. The most politically divided and dysfunctional industrialized nation will only become more so.
Trump’s Harvard crackdown is good politics, but his war on global talent will cost America dearly
President Donald Trump has decided to end federal funding for Harvard University. He’s also warning that all international students, including those now enrolled and working toward a degree, will have their visas suspended going forward. A federal judge has issued a stay to block this move, and the fight could wind up in front of the Supreme Court.
What’s the point of all this?
Trump considers Harvard a political adversary, and he will use the charge that the university has failed to protect Jewish students and faculty on campus from harassment by pro-Palestinian activists to punish it. Harvard has also refused to end race-based hiring practices, which the Supreme Court has ruled is illegal. Harvard says it’s already addressing both these issues, and courts will be busy in the coming weeks sorting out these claims and counterclaims.
Trump is very happy to have this fight, and the punishment is the point. He knows that, unlike, say, China, Harvard can’t effectively counterpunch. He also knows that when Democrats defend Harvard, Trump’s base voters, some of whom might be getting jumpy about inflation expectations, will rally to their president. After all, Harvard is an elite, rich, progressively minded institution – and therefore a big, beautiful target for populist attack.
We’ve seen this page of Trump’s playbook before. His immigration police arrest an illegal migrant, the government deports him to El Salvador without due process, and he watches as Democrats will jump to defend a man that Trump’s allies claim (without proof) is a member of a vicious criminal gang.
The message: Dems fight for illegal immigrant drug dealers while I fight for you.
In the Harvard case, Trump says he’ll strip the Ivy League School of $3 billion in federal funding and divert the money toward the trade schools and community colleges where his voters are more likely to send their kids. These are just a couple of the many reasons that Democrats remain even less popular than Trump.
That’s the politics. What about the reality?
First, the money Harvard stands to lose isn’t going toward the Comparative Literature department or printing up flyers for open air seminars on diversity, equity, and inclusion. It’s not going for the hiring of more faculty for the Queer Theory curriculum. It’s mostly invested in scientific research, particularly in the School of Public Health. It is money intended to advance our understanding of multiple sclerosis and to limit the spread of tuberculosis. The long-term damage to public health here should be obvious to anyone.
Second, if Harvard were the only university Trump was targeting, then other great schools could absorb the students, including international students, that Harvard will lose. They could fill the research vacuum that penalizing Harvard will create. But no one should be confident that Trump won’t attack many more of the schools with the prestige, brand value, and alumni networks that attract students, parents, faculty, administrators, and resources.
And for foreign students, Trump is doing much more than simply suspending visas. He’s telling them in plain language that they won’t have the same rights as the Americans they go to class with. They won’t have free speech protections. Their smartphones can be taken and searched for evidence of opinions the Trump administration doesn’t like. If they text the wrong message or stop to listen to the wrong rally, they can be deported without even a hearing.
That will have a chilling effect on the ability of American universities to attract the most talented and motivated students from around the world – with implications that last long after Donald Trump has left the stage.
When my grandparents came to this country, and my grandmother passed through Ellis Island, seeing the Statue of Liberty with their own eyes was deeply important. The message was clear: the world’s best and brightest can build a home in America, for themselves and their descendants. Those with the courage and determination to flee repression and deprivation in their homelands will be welcome in this country. That’s a source of our national pride, but also of our national strength.
Today, America welcomes Afrikaner farmers from South Africa fleeing a genocide against white South Africans that does not exist, despite the fake videos and doctored photos that suggest otherwise. We won’t accept refugees fleeing the oppression of a leftist regime in Venezuela or the chaos in Haiti. We won’t take Palestinian children in the line of fire in Gaza.
Trump says Harvard’s hiring policies should be blind to questions of race. But by welcoming white South African farmers to the front of the immigration line while kicking talented non-white foreign students out of the country, the rest of the world won’t conclude the current administration is color blind.
Most of the rest of the world isn’t white. Therefore, most of the smartest, most talented, most determined students – and the workers best able to build dynamic private-sector companies – around the world aren’t white. The only way the US can compete over time against countries like China and India, which have a lot more people, is to continue to use America’s immigration advantage.
Does the average American want a world of diminished US influence? An America far less connected to the rest of the world? I don’t believe that.
Our politics is deeply dysfunctional, but our people – in states red and blue – still want to live in a dynamic and generous country that creates the opportunities that other nations can’t, won’t, or both. A nation that has always benefited from its openness.
By telling international students and legal migrants they are less welcome, less worthy, will not be well treated, should not come to American universities, should not bring their ideas and energy to help fuel our economy, we will inflict profound and lasting damage on our own country.
For all these reasons, Trump’s war on Harvard is both shrewd short-term politics and deeply destructive for the United States of America over the years to come.
Last week, I had the privilege and pleasure of serving as commencement speaker for graduates of the School of Liberal Arts at Tulane University, my alma mater. And the venue was the Louisiana Superdome, a little bigger of a house than I’m used to.
It was a great day for me, and I’ll always be grateful to Tulane for the invitation. But it was a sobering experience too. It’s one thing to look out over a crowd of this year’s graduates, young women and men who are well prepared for challenges ahead but who may not yet appreciate just how messed up our world is right now. It’s quite another when you’re looking into the faces of this year’s graduates of your alma mater. The people who now sit where you sat. It makes me more aware of how just much has happened on the road from 1989 to 2025 – how much we couldn’t have imagined.
Here's the speech in full…
It’s great to be back at Tulane.
And I'm honored to be your distinguished alum.
I realize it's possible you've decided to give me this award because you neglected to look into my time here as a student.
I was 15 when I came to Tulane, a kid from the projects outside Boston. I went to an all-boys Catholic high school. This led to an unusually exciting freshman year. I lied about my age, both for drinking purposes (which I had never done before), and also for dating purposes (which I had also never done before).
I missed classes, slept through a final, had a 1.9 GPA my first term. When they put me on probation and threatened to send me home to Boston, I figured I should spend less time at the Boot and more time in my classes.
In the end, I graduated without further public controversy. For me, Tulane was a laboratory of people and personalities, of studies and learning, of theory and of facts on the ground. I have the school of liberal arts to thank that I can tell the difference.
But when I graduated, I realized that no one actually hired political scientists, and so I decided to start a company to persuade people that political science mattered. Thirty years later, I've made a career of it. I’ve made it possible for at least a few political scientists to have jobs doing just that.
I suppose that’s the reason I’m receiving Tulane's distinguished alumni award (and truly, I am honored by it). But at the same time, I am a little bummed out about it, because compared to pretty much all of the parents here, I am failing most dramatically in my broader professional efforts. It's tough to be a political scientist right now. The stuff I work on — helping understand political leaders, governments, the world order — it's all falling apart.
Back when I graduated this was not true. I was class of 1989. That's the year you want to graduate as a political scientist. The Wall came down. We won the cold war. Collective security, free trade, rule of law, democracy. For everybody.
The problem is that we were winners, but we weren't leaders. The leaders were the people that won back in World War II and that created the world order on the ashes of that destroyed world. The Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, General MacArthur rebuilding Japan. The United Nations. The US-led global order.
Today, we've grown too comfortable as the most powerful country in that world, with the almighty dollar, the only global military, the top global businesses, and the best universities. We are in the most stable part of the world, with generally friendly neighbors (at least until we started fighting with them). Protected by both great oceans.
For generations now we have been the most privileged nation, but our own political system has become the most dysfunctional among rich democracies. Most everyone agrees on this. We even agree on who to blame. It's the “other guys.
So, what are we going to do about it? I use my voice to be speak up about it. We can't fix a problem until we identify it. I get things wrong, but I say what I truly believe in the hopes that helps other people do the same.
Because when we stand up, when law firms stand up, when universities stand up, courage is contagious. We have to show people a way.
Tulane class of 2025, what will you do about it?
First, you already have. You chose the liberal arts, which means, at some point, you made a conscious decision to pursue ideas over income – at least initially. It’s brave. It’s noble. It’s…confusing to your family.
But what you’ve been doing here matters, because while engineers are out there designing drones, you’ve been asking the more important question: who gets to decide where they fly? While business schools are simulating markets, you’ve been asking: who is this economy actually working for? While accountants are balancing the books, you've been asking: why do we pay taxes?
Let’s talk about the world you’re walking into. It’s no 1989, but it’s lively. We’ve got a climate crisis, a technology arms race, and a bunch of hot wars. We’ve got global alliances falling apart, superpowers behaving like exes who keep texting each other at 2AM, and a US domestic political environment that feels like a mad libs game with too many sazeracs.
But I’m not here to depress you. That’s what Twitter’s for.
I'm here to remind you: this is your moment. And no, not in the “you are the future” way that commencement speakers love to say before the parents applaud them. I mean you actually have an edge. You studied complexity. You learned that history doesn’t repeat, but it does plagiarize. You know that “unprecedented” really just means we didn’t study the past closely enough. You know that context is what matters, and that headlines don't tell the story. In a world of polarization, you’ve studied nuance. In a time of information overload, you’ve practiced discernment. In an age obsessed with outcomes, you’ve explored meaning.
Hopefully you have also learned along the way that -- ChatGPT notwithstanding -- hard work does pay off.
So, let me point out that all of those skills I just mentioned don’t just make for good leaders. Those skills make for good people.
Understanding complexity, believing that there is value in the truth, seeking the good in people, and looking beyond the moment right in front of you. Those are skills you need for life.
And you’re in it right now. A lot of ambitious young people set out these markers of achievement for themselves, and of course you’re sitting here on top of a big one. Having achieved one, you push for the next, and so you might think my real adult life begins when I get my first job, when I get out of grad school, when I buy my first home. Don’t do that. Your real adult life is already here. You’ll make mistakes, and you’ll have regrets. But you grow from them.
If you stay true to the skills and values that you’ve learned here, if you care about the family and friends that have moved you forward, your life will be rich, whatever path you choose.
So, what should you do with your liberal arts degree? Whatever you want.
Some of you will go into journalism, helping us understand a world spinning faster by the day. Others will work in policy, trying to keep the world from setting itself on fire – literally and metaphorically. Some will become artists, storytellers, teachers, nonprofit leaders, or the only ethics advisor at a tech company full of Stanford dropouts. That job will be important.
I’m not saying it’ll be easy. Your algorithms will try to convince you every day that nuance doesn't matter, and that more stuff and money will make you happy. Fight against that. Stay curious. Stay human. Stay weird, but the good kind of weird – the kind that doesn’t let cynicism turn into detachment.
And please, when you start running things – because trust me that day is sooner than you think – remember what you learned here: that ethics without power doesn't accomplish much, and that power without ethics is what got us here.
I'm counting on you, Tulane graduates. I’m counting on you to be as welcoming to weirdo strangers as you were to me as a 15-year-old freshman.
I’m counting on you to use new technologies, especially AI, that allow for innovation—improving your own capabilities—inconceivable when I graduated.
I’m counting on you to be curious as the world changes around us, to connect more closely with those that are different from you, and to recognize your connections with one another in spite of those differences.
I'm counting on you to be admired not because of your money and privilege but because you act the way others know they should.
I'm counting on you to be inspiring not because of your charisma and personality, but because you set the standard. I'm counting on you to be leaders again. Because if you don't, we're leaving it to the finance majors.
Tulane graduates, I believe in you. My thanks for giving me the opportunity to tell you that.
And congratulations to you on this most important day.