Jonah Shepp/New York:
Even Trump Can’t Sell This Crappy Iran Deal.
No amount of blowhard spin can make this into a win.
Ending wars is almost always a good thing from a humanitarian perspective. In keeping with Erasmus’s proverbial maxim that “the most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war,” one could argue that Trump, in essentially capitulating to a dilapidated middle power, was acting as a great statesman to end a needless, costly and destructive war. That is, of course, until one considers that he started the war by choice, after being fully informed of just how needless, costly, and destructive it was going to be, and until one considers how the man who styles himself history’s greatest dealmaker has just made one of the worst deals in the history of American foreign policy.
Having to sell Congress and the American public on this shambolic agreement is hardly sufficient punishment for Trump’s moral and strategic failure in launching this war. Try as he might to spin it, Trump can’t hide from the fact that he took a gamble on this war and lost badly, and we’re all paying the price.
NOTUS:
Trump’s Iran Strategy Tests the Limits of the ‘Madman Theory’
Negotiating can be difficult when the president keeps changing the parameters.
“I am old enough to remember President Nixon’s ‘madman theory,’” said Alan Eyre, a former U.S. career diplomat, of Nixon’s handling of the Vietnam War. Trump, he said, “is doing what he does because he can’t do otherwise, and that’s the biggest threat. He has no strategic messaging. … He’s going to sabotage negotiations, not just by moving red lines, which I think he probably will do, but by saying stuff in the media that’s going to have an effect.”..
Iran has learned to focus on tangible signs of Trump’s preferences rather than his language, seeing his unpredictability as a strategy rather than taking it at face value, said Sina Toossi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy think tank.
Toossi pointed to last weekend, when Trump criticized Israel for bombing the Lebanese capital of Beirut after Iran said an emerging ceasefire had to cover Lebanon. Iranian decision-makers did not perceive it as a U.S.-Israeli split, but instead a test from Washington of how Iran would handle the matter, Toossi said. Iran ultimately launched major barrages against Israel and doubled down on including Lebanon in peace talks.
After two U.S.-Israeli assaults in less than two years since Trump’s return to office, Iran has seen that depleting stocks of U.S. weaponry “didn’t move the needle for Trump,” but bolstering gas prices by shutting down Hormuz did, Toossi said.
Exactly. Trump saw the gold and glitter, and swooned. And since he and his cronies don’t read, no one saw the set-up. https://t.co/q0n5zQTq9W
— Robert E Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly) June 19, 2026
John Stoehr/The Editorial Board:
Make the bad guys pay: A Democratic message for the white working class
They will respond to gestures of power.
“I don’t even want to vote for anybody in the next election,” Annette Dombrowski told the Post last month. The 64-year-old janitor in rural Ohio voted for the president three times. She used to vote in the midterms, but not this time. “I don’t care, because they’re all crap.”
Dombrowski represents an “extraordinary swing,” as the Times put it last week. Though his unpopularity, especially among affluent white women, hurt the GOP in the 2018 midterms, white working-class voters stood by their man. They approved of Trump’s “management of the economy by margins of 30 percentage points or even more,” the Times said. Now, however, as inflation climbs ever higher, his base is falling out from beneath him. The Times: “Now, recent polls show them disapproving by anywhere from 14 to more than 30 points.”
That’s why a GOP pollster who has worked with Trump is sounding downright panicked. “It’s working-class voters who are not happy with the Republican Party, and they may not come out and vote,” John McLaughlin told the Times. The day before the 2018 midterms, Trump’s approval rating on the economy among white working-class voters was 66 percent, according to a CNN poll. Now, his disapproval is 57 percent, a recent CNN poll said. If the Republicans fail to mobilize them, McLaughlin said, “we lose the House and the Senate.”
WMTW:
Ranked choice results: Bobby Charles, Hannah Pingree win Maine gubernatorial primaries; Matt Dunlap wins Democratic CD2 primary
The results were expected to be announced at about 11:15 p.m. Thursday, but announcement spilled into early hours of Friday morning
The Maine Secretary of State’s Office has announced the results of the ranked choice voting tabulation for both gubernatorial primary races and the Democratic primary for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District representative.
The winner of the Republican primary for Maine governor is Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Bobby Charles, while the winner of the Democratic gubernatorial primary is former Speaker of the Maine House Hannah Pingree. Charles and Pingree advance to the Nov. 3 general election ballot, which State Sen. Rick Bennett has qualified for as an independent candidate.
State Auditor Matt Dunlap won the Democratic primary for the 2nd Congressional District. He will face former Gov. Paul LePage, who was unopposed in the Republican primary, in the general election for Rep. Jared Golden’s U.S. House seat. Golden announced in November 2025 that he would not seek reelection.
Story here:
The DCCC spent $7,500 on a joint ad buy w/ Baldacci, per @Ad_Impact
That’s not much to the $500,000 that Real Change PAC, an alleged GOP front group, spent to boost Dunlap.
Still, a big black eye for the DCCC in #ME02https://t.co/DxvMP55exD
— Andrew Solender (@AndrewSolender) June 19, 2026
Republican Paul LePage will be favored in that district.
Matt Glassman:
Congress as board of directors
Start from a simple principle: Congress doesn’t do anything. At least not in the sense that a six-year-old would understand. The executive branch? Those people do things. A park ranger at Yellowstone will give you a tour. A scientist at NIH is putting things in test tubes and trying to cure cancer. An FBI agent is cuffing a suspected criminal. Those are all things people do that a child can wrap their had around.
Congress doesn’t do anything like. that And so if we think of the U.S. government as a corporation, the executive branch is the actual company making the widgets. And the head of the corporation? That’s the CEO. In this analogy, it’s the president. The CEO doesn’t tell the line workers what to do every day, but they do set the general direction for the company over the next few quarters and next few years.
Congress, in this corporate analogy, is the board of directors, overseeing the corporation and the CEO, on behalf of the shareholders. Which in this analogy is the voters.
Scathing new argument filed by New Yorrk Times in its legal battle vs. Dept of Defense’s onerous new Pentagon press restriction
“Relentless, unprecedented efforts to increasingly limit journalists’ access to the Pentagon is additional evidence of their aim to punish the Times” pic.twitter.com/xj2ttydfhl
— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) June 19, 2026
Jill Lawrence/The Bulwark:
Trump Still Has a Bad Case of Obama Envy
The double spotlight on his failed Iran war and Obama’s Chicago celebration will make it worse.
Trump’s Obama envy has been an enduring psychopolitical feature of the national landscape for what seems like forever. He mentioned Obama’s name nearly two dozen times during the three-day G7 summit, by the New York Times’s count, and repeatedly insisted that his deal was better than Obama’s, despite glaring evidence to the contrary. Cartoonist Patrick Chappatte nailed the dynamic eight years ago. “What was so bad in that Iran deal?” asks an annoyed European Union representative. Trump’s reply: “Obama’s signature.”
Trump’s preoccupation with his predecessor has long centered on challenging Obama’s citizenship and his eligibility to even be president. He started raising questions about Obama’s birth certificate in early 2011, and his promotion of this “birther” conspiracy theory escalated after a famous incident that year at a White House Correspondents Dinner. It was Saturday night, April 30, at the Washington Hilton. Trump was in the room, and Obama was having some barbed fun about Trump’s “credentials and breadth of experience.”
A new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll finds a record low share of Americans approve of President Trump’s job performance and his handling of the economy heading into the summer before a key midterm election.https://t.co/GEr1X8rvYT
— stephen fowler (@stphnfwlr) June 18, 2026
Thomas Zimmer/Democracy Americana:
When the Republic Almost Fell
The internal conflict over whether or not to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to deploy troops domestically for law enforcement purposes, lingered throughout the year 2025 before coming to a head in late January 2026, just days after masked Customs and Border Protection officers had killed Alex Pretty on January 24, and within weeks of an ICE agent murdering Renée Good in the streets of Minneapolis.
Once again, Miller was pushing for Trump to escalate further, and this time he had JD Vance by his side who lead the charge during a meeting in Susie Wiles’ office. As the New York Times puts it: “Mr. Vance got to the point. They needed to invoke the Insurrection Act, swiftly, to crush the unrest in Minnesota. It would be painful in the short term, he said, but the message it would send – that paid agitators could not get away with disrupting ICE operations – would make sure no one tried it again.”
However, Miller and Vance failed to convince the rest of the administration. Scharf and others in the Wiles camp argued that the situation in Minneapolis was already a public relations disaster for the Trump government – “the public was recoiling,” as deputy chief of staff James Blair put it, according to the Times –, and escalating further was only going to cost them more support from the public. The meeting ended without a firm decision. But Miller and Vance had effectively failed to achieve their goal of getting Trump to use the military to suppress protests.
But it didn’t fall.
Gothamist:
The Knicks reminded New Yorkers how to hang out
A large group of people ran in circles around the Washington Square Park fountain. Grown men of the traditionally masculine variety openly wept. The entire city seemed to be rapturously swaying together, singing along to “Empire State of Mind.” The record-breaking ticker-tape parade was euphoric, a celebration 53 years in the making for the real heads, and a jubilant reason to congregate for the rest of us. At the ticker tape parade celebrating the win, despite a potentially dangerous crush of people, the antics stayed generally impish, the atmosphere oddly serene. Confetti floated from the Canyon of Heroes to the surrounding blocks, where the thousands who hadn’t made it past the barricades climbed atop barricades and subway globes, trying to catch a glimpse of the team, or simply remain in proximity to the event. Happy screams rose from all around and echoed off the skyscrapers.
As time marches forward from last weekend’s legendary championship win, the hubbub will die down. But the feeling doesn’t have to. Remember that the people you partied with live here among you. You don’t need the Knicks or thousands of people to weird dance with randos, play your bagpipes for the block, or talk to your neighbor.
Your palate cleanser:
Norway teaching Scotland how to row ❤️❤️🏴🏴🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴THis is what the World Cup is all about 🤝❤️🏴@WeAreSTVRadio pic.twitter.com/wkRUlNXEM3
— Cat Harvey (@MissCatHarvey) June 19, 2026
Bonus Justin Wolfers video with Cliff Schecter:
We’ll get straight to the point: The financial hardships that Daily Kos is facing this year are tough.
We continue to be paywall-free. We continue to be supported by our readers, not billionaires or corporations. But we need to bring in more revenue. We are leaning on our community more than ever to help make ends meet.
