Back to War with Iran + The Midterm Pivot Nobody's Buying (Yet)

Here are the news stories that deserve your attention for the week July 12, 2026:

#1) War on Iran

The US and Iran are engaged in all-out war. Again. And since Friday, at least three US service members have been killed and one remains missing.

Here's what we know as of Sunday afternoon:

• On Saturday night, the US military said that it had "launched new airstrikes" against Iran to "swiftly punish" the IRGC for an attack that killed two American service members in Jordan on Friday night. After that attack, one service member is still missing although the military says they have found remains and are working to identify them.
• On Sunday, another service member was killed in Iraq during a "controlled detonation of [an] unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian one-way attack drone," the US military said.
• That brings confirmed US military deaths in this war to 17 confirmed fatalities since the US and Israel first attacked Iran on February 28.
• Iran said it had suspended all "commitments" outlined in the agreement with the US. On Saturday, Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei said Trump's word was "utterly worthless and devoid of credibility."

Here's how we got (back) here:

• Two weeks ago, Iran attacked commercial ships going through the Strait of Hormuz, the US retaliated and Trump called Iran "scum" and declared the MOU was "over."
• But, it's not so simple. The MOU included "language giving Iran official power in the strait" and "formalized a reality that Iranian officials have made clear throughout the war: They now control the strait," The New York Times reports after speaking to experts.

"While many U.S. and foreign officials welcomed the cease-fire, critics warned that the agreement was dangerously vague, particularly language in its fifth paragraph saying that Iran would 'make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels' through the Strait of Hormuz. 'No one should be surprised that Iran views that as explicitly giving them an enduring role controlling passage through Hormuz,' said Michael Ratney, a retired career diplomat who was the most recent U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia."

• Last weekend it escalated again. Iran struck a container ship traveling on an unapproved route, Trump said the US "bombed the hell out of" Iran, and Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz closed. The US then reimposed its naval blockade of Iranian ports, which is an act of war.
• BTW, with the strait closed again, the IEA now says a global oil shock is "weeks, not months" away as oil reserves continues to dwindle.
• As attacks continued all week, Iran hit US assets and bases across the Gulf — Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan — and by Friday had widened its strikes into Syria and Iraq. The US responded by hitting Iranian civilian infrastructure: bridges, a railway junction, power lines, a telecom tower, an airport, a wheat warehouse, a mineral-water factory, and a strike very close to a children's cancer hospital, forcing the evacuation of its 211 patients. Striking civilian infrastructure is a war crime, per the UN. At least 30 civilians in Iran have been killed by US attacks this week.

RELATED:

• Democrats are still trying to assert their check on Trump's power. This week, they voted to hold up the Pentagon's defense spending bill unless it includes language to limit Trump's war powers.
  • The rationale: "Of course, war powers resolutions were Democrats' first choice to oppose the war. Senators adopted a House-approved resolution calling for an end to hostilities on June 23. But because the resolution lacked the force of law, the symbolic rebuke has done little to alter Trump's military campaign," MS NOW reports. "With Congress on record opposing the war, Democrats now worry that any approval of an annual defense authorization measure will be interpreted as a tacit legal justification for Trump's strikes."
• Vice President JD Vance denied reports that Iranian officials warned him that Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff were "abusing" the peace negotiations for their own financial gain. Vance called the claims "completely bogus."

#2) How to Dismantle a Democracy: Election Interference

On Thursday, Trump gave a primetime address on "election security." Ahead of the speech, the White House claimed it would unveil newly declassified, explosive evidence about elections. But neither the speech nor the documents released afterward contained anything new—or explosive.

I've read a lot of what the White House released. It's just a collection of cherry-picked intelligence documents, some of them heavily redacted, meaning they lack a lot of needed context. They give us a peek inside investigations and intelligence gathering on a wide variety of election-related matters, but none show that any one person, country, or entity came close to messing with or altering the outcome of an election. And, btw, declassifying intelligence documents does not automatically make the discussed intelligence stronger or more reliable. (There's talk he's doing to release more stuff on China, but it's likely just intelligence they've collected over time but not verified or reliable).

But neither the speech nor the document release was meant to prove anything. It was a pivot.

The biggest tell (for me): While Trump mentioned "a stolen" election he did not mention 2020 as being stolen by name. Screaming about 2020 being stolen like a sore loser – as he has for the last six years – is not going to get him the outcome he wants this time, and it seems someone has gotten through to Trump to change tactics.

After writing ⬆️, I found this: Politico reports that "several Trump officials urged the president to remain restrained and on script, a notoriously difficult task for the president, whose aides often learn what the president is going to say as he says it. 'They explained the way to be taken seriously is not to be crazy,' the senior official told POLITICO."

Let's see how long that lasts. Hopefully, not until November.

Everything Trump has tried so far to steer the outcome of November's elections before they happen hasn't worked (like trying to pass the SAVE Act), and he's running out of time.

He needs a way to challenge results after the fact now, just in case. So the speech introduced a long list of potential "threats" to the election system, laying the groundwork for them to be used later to question the results, if he wants to.

Here are some of Trump's claims from his speech:

• Foreign interference. Trump claimed China obtained information on hundreds of millions of American voters and wanted to hurt his campaign. The intelligence community's 2021 assessment found China considered trying to influence the election but decided against it because the risks outweighed the benefits. It did not find that China altered votes or interfered with vote counting. Also, the files he claims China has are records that can be publicly accessed or paid for.
• Voting machines. Trump argued electronic voting systems can be compromised. That's true. Like any technology, they have vulnerabilities. But evidence that a vulnerability exists is not evidence someone exploited it or changed an election. And there is none.
• Michigan, a.k.a. Democratic states. Trump pointed to suspicious voter-registration applications submitted in one area in 2020. Those applications were detected before anyone voted using them, and the federal investigation ended without charges. Also, interestingly, Trump didn't say whether those applications were for Republicans or Democrats or both.
• Noncitizens on the rolls. Trump claimed the government identified more than 250,000 non-citizens registered to vote. Preliminary database matches cannot reliably establish that everyone flagged is currently a noncitizen—or that any of them voted illegally. Plus, that number seems inflated. DHS has since said it mailed letters to those states — California, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania — but "copies of the letters obtained by The Hill found gaps in the numbers DHS publicized and those they communicated to states and little explanation for how it reached its topline estimate. Numbers crunched by The Hill found DHS could only point to 118,000 voters it said may match information they have on file for a noncitizen." That's less than half what Trump claimed publicly.
• Anyone inside the government—even people who work for him. Trump claimed intelligence officials and other insiders hid election vulnerabilities and interference attempts from him and the American people during his first term. Meaning, if he needs a fall guy or gal this time around, accusing someone inside his administration won't be a shocker later.
• The press. Trump also went after NBC and ABC for declining to air the speech live (yay, they found their backbone!), accusing them of being part of a conspiracy. Fox & Friends didn't mention the speech a single time during its three-hour morning show on Friday, btw.

All this leaves Trump with exactly the arrangement he wants: if Republicans win in November, they supposedly beat a rigged election system! If they lose, he has already introduced a menu of reasons why and has several avenues to pursue.

The good news so far: The New York Times reported that Trump's election claims and his SAVE Act push have found a muted response from Republican lawmakers generally – and "appeared to have landed with a whimper."

Adding insult to injury: Two days after the primetime address — Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) shut the door on the SAVE America Act for good. In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal 🎁 titled "Why I'm Voting Against the SAVE America Act," Collins makes practical objections to it and how it would "have serious negative effects" in her state and "create chaos."

For example, a new in-person registration requirement would be especially detrimental because "Alaska has only six election offices where that requirement could clearly be met. Six places in a state more than twice the size of Texas, where roughly 80% of our communities, and about 20% of our population, aren't connected by road."

RELATED:

• On Friday — the day after Trump's speech — DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced that state election officials could face prison time unless they run their voter rolls through an unreliable and error-prone government database that falsely flags people as noncitizens. As we discussed last week, DHS is also threatening to withhold counterterrorism grants from states unless they give in to DHS.
  • "If his government had actual evidence of noncitizen voting, there would be indictments; Trump has been hounding US attorneys to bring such cases, and the fact that he hasn't shows that these claims likely have no legs. Claims of noncitizen registration often evaporate upon closer inspection (such as the systems' failure to catch newly naturalized citizens). And he's made no claims about noncitizens actually voting," writes Rick Hasen, an election law expert.
• Trump's nominee for Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton finally got his Senate confirmation hearing and wouldn't say Trump lost or Biden won the 2020 election, opting instead for: "I am not an election denier. Joe Biden was certified." Weird answer.
  • Remember last month when Trump told Clayton not to show up for this confirmation hearing because he was mad Congress wasn't passing his beloved SAVE Act, which would make it harder for millions of eligible voters to vote? When asked about that incident, Clayton would not go into detail.

#3) Free Palestine: Gaza + the West Bank

Saying there is a ceasefire in Gaza doesn't mean there is a ceasefire in Gaza.

Since October, when Israel and Hamas agreed to one, Israel has violated the agreement 3,689 times at least, killed more than 1,122 Palestinians and injured 3,599 more as of July 15, Al Jazeera reports. Israel also continues to prevent humanitarian aid from entering, only allowing 35% of the agreed upon amount in and continues to illegally occupy more and more of Gaza pushing past boundaries they established in that agreement known as the yellow line.

Al Jazeera reports that "political and strategic analysts warn that these daily incursions are not isolated security operations, but rather part of what appears to be a calculated pattern to kill law enforcement officers, medical professionals, government officials and intellectuals. These killings, they warn, could systematically derail the United States-backed plan for a post-war Gaza, paralyse the so-called Board of Peace set up under the Trump administration plan, and effectively allow Israel to maintain indefinite control over a territory that is otherwise uninhabitable."

To that end, this week:

• Israeli forces killed six police officers after striking a police station in a refugee camp, attacked two residential neighborhoods — including one apartment building with a missile — killing at least eight people with more trapped under the rubble, and struck a funeral procession killing another seven people and wounding 22 more.
• Israel's Defense Minister Israel Katz said they have plans to set up new illegal settlements in Gaza. Per Al Jazeera, "Issam Younis, a prominent Palestinian human rights defender and director of the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, said he was not surprised by Katz's latest comments. 'It was very clear from day one in the genocide that the main goal was to make life impossible in Gaza by destroying everything,' he told Al Jazeera. 'It's a race for time – take over land, starve Gaza and deny it any chance at life, then expel the population and build settlements.'"
• The Guardian adds that with elections coming up on October 27, "Netanyahu's far-right coalition is racing to expand control of land in occupied Palestine and drive out Palestinians before its mandate expires." And, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced $400 million for new illegal West Bank settlements "but kept the decision secret because of expected US opposition…"

RELATED:

• 103 Democrats plus Republican Thomas Massie voted for an amendment that would cut military aid to Israel. It failed 104-314. "The scale of Democratic support for the amendment Wednesday was an acknowledgment of the grassroots fury that has reshaped the political landscape inside the party — a transformation that has rapidly accelerated under President Donald Trump and his close ties to the hard-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Just over two years ago, only 37 House Democrats — mostly on the party's hard-left flank — voted for a similar bid to crack down on U.S. aid for Israel," Politico writes. AIPAC swiftly stopped fundraising for at least 15 Democrats that they had previously endorsed because of their support of the amendment, The New York Times reported. While it's great that so many lawmakers support cutting off funding for Israel, let's not forget that 314 lawmakers voted against it including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
• Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) was detained by illegal Israeli settlers and the Israeli military forces during a trip to the occupied West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to blame West Bank violence on a handful of "juvenile delinquents" which is flat-out false.
• The Gaza Ministry of Health — whose death toll numbers are widely accepted as accurate by the Israeli military and notable publications like The Lancet — says that at least 73,231 have been killed as of last week and 173,686 injured during Israel's genocide in Gaza since October 2023.

#4) ANOTHER FATAL ICE SHOOTING

Another father is dead this week at the hands of an armed federal agent.

Last week, a federal agent shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo during a traffic stop in Houston.

This week, ICE agent David Michael Brouillette shot and killed 25-year-old Joan Sebastian Duran Guerrero in front of his wife and 3-year-old daughter in Biddeford, Maine.

DHS has not identified the agent responsible for the shooting but numerous relatives confirmed to news outlets that Brouillette was the shooter.  An ex-wife and his daughter said he told them it was self-defense.

Here's what else we know so far:

• Guerrero, a father from Colombia, was in the US on a valid work permit. Brouillette shot him during what DHS claims was an attempted traffic stop on Monday.
• DHS Secretary Mullin told Maine lawmakers that Guerrero was not wanted by federal agents — meaning they were not operating in the area because they were looking for him specifically. It's not clear why he was being stopped by DHS.
• DHS claims Guerrero weaponized his vehicle during the traffic stop. But the agency has not provided evidence that he tried to use his car to hurt anyone.
• Several of Brouillette's family members tell the AP he has "a history of terrifying and violent behavior... They accuse him of attacking women in his life over the years, and one shared a voicemail with the AP from last winter in which he told her that he thought someone should slit her throat."
• His ex-wife Ashley told the AP that he once threw boiling hot water at her while she was holding their child. She also told NPR that he called her after the shooting asking her to vouch for his character. "He asked me to basically talk good in his character, not to talk bad about him. And if I couldn't not talk bad about him, then just not to talk at all to anybody," she told NPR. "And I told him that I was not going to lie for him. He asked me not to talk about the abuse in our marriage. And I told him again I was not going to lie for him… He has displayed racism. His nickname in high school was 'White Boy David,' if that tells you anything."
• ICE paused vehicle stops after the shooting deaths but a "furious" Trump reversed the decision, CNN reported.
• ICE has been increasing its activity again at the maniacal urging of Trump's deputy chief of staff and white nationalist Stephen Miller who is demanding agents arrest 3,000 people a day. Under quota pressure, federal agents are dispatched to cities, engage in violent, sometimes illegal and inhumane tactics. Remember Renee Good and Alex Pretti of Minneapolis? No one has been held accountable for their homicides despite overwhelming evidence—including video footage of both killings.
• While they are falling short of their goals, ICE's monthly averages are going up. Last month, ICE was averaging 600 arrests per day. "NBC News has learned that the agency arrested more than 1,300 people Saturday and more than 1,100 people Sunday, according to a source familiar with the data and operations."
• The 🎁 New York Times reports that 23 people have been shot by federal agents since last year, six of them have died, including three US citizens.

RELATED:

• The Washington Post 🎁 reports on how the latest shooting is reshaping the Maine Senate race where incumbent Susan Collins (R) could be in trouble in a once safe seat.
• NBC News reports on how Minnesota officials say they finally have "previously withheld evidence" from the federal government in the shooting deaths of Good and Pretti including body cam footage.
• The New York Times found the government's prosecutions of people charged with assaulting ICE agents are collapsing — hundreds of cases have been lost or abandoned.

• The Trump administration wants to tackle political dissent using the full force of the federal government. This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a hastily arranged conference with representatives from more than 60 countries where he announced an "international counterterrorism coalition" against "transnational far-left networks.
  • "Civil liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have warned that the far-left terrorism designations could be used to target lawful protest activity and political opponents rather than genuine security threats," Reuters reports.
  • "They can call themselves anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist, communist, anarchist or Marxist. It's always the same," Rubio said at the meeting. "It is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality and justice and liberation, an overwhelming need to tear down what greater men have built, to wreck what is beautiful and what is right on behalf of people who are only filled with ugliness and have nothing else to offer the world. Through violence and through terror, they once again seek to impose their ugliness on all of us."
  • The countries — most of them from Europe — sent low-level officials perhaps in a sign that they're not really on board or interested in the campaign."The Trump administration's push to convince officials of the dangers posed by far-left terrorism had been met with skepticism by some allies, who had said that their own security officials did not assess the threat with the same level of severity as right-wing or Islamist terrorism," The Washington Post reports.
• The administration sent several high-level officials for the meeting including FBI Director Kash Patel, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Deputy Chief of Staff and Miller who told the crowd that "left-wing terrorism always ends in bloodshed, misery and suffering."
• Thomas Renard, director of The Hague-based International Centre for Counter-Terrorism told Al Jazeera: "What we are seeing now in the United States is that counterterrorism has been completely politicised, instrumentalised... For instance, the threat from far-right terrorism, which was for decades considered as the primary domestic threat, has now completely disappeared from the US counterterrorism strategy.'"
• Cuba's national grid collapsed for the third time in under two weeks caused in part because of the US blockade on oil to the island in a political pressure campaign. 
  • The AP: "Fuel has been running out across Cuba since January, when U.S. President Donald Trump threatened tariffs on any country that sells or provides oil to the island, deepening the island's ongoing economic and financial crisis. Public transportation has largely been halted, and officials have canceled tens of thousands of surgeries."

• Todd Blanche sat for a Senate confirmation hearing this week — and it's not at all clear whether he'll be confirmed. His often contentious hearings covered the Epstein files, January 6, and Trump's so-called $1.776 billion slush fund. The Senate is expected to vote on or around July 30.
  • He needs all but one Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee to support him and right now, Sens. Thom Tillis (NC) and John Cornyn (TX) are on the fence.
  • Tillis asked Blanche to meet with Epstein survivors to have a shot at winning his vote. And Blanche did, but victims say the meeting was emotional and demoralizing. "I found him abrasive, condescending, and intentionally noncommittal to survivors — a marked contrast to his public testimony during his confirmation hearing… While quick to point to the failures of previous administrations, he refused to take accountability for mistakes made under his own leadership," victim Annie Farmer said in a statement.

• A federal judge, Kathleen Williams, ruled she is referring lawyers for the president in his $1.776 billion IRS "settlement" to the bar for possible discipline — after concluding that the case was never a real lawsuit at all. What she found: there was "never adverseness between the Parties." Trump controls the IRS, the Treasury, and the DOJ — so he was, functionally, suing himself, using a federal court to hand himself and his family blanket immunity and earmark billions in taxpayer dollars. In her words, they "ignored ethical norms, court rules, and legal authority to manipulate the judicial process."
• Trump is reducing the size of two national monuments in Utah by about 90%  — nearly 3 million acres — to open them up to development and "undoing protections established by his Democratic predecessors on public lands that are sacred among many Native Americans," the AP reports. "Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in southern Utah have ancient cliff dwellings, petroglyphs and scenic canyons, as well as coal and uranium deposits that state officials want made available for development."
• The Trump administration is pushing a "whole-of-government" campaign to dismantle the International Criminal Court. "The administration's ire against the ICC goes back to President Donald Trump's first term, when it targeted the ICC for seeking to investigate alleged war crimes committed by US forces in Afghanistan. The second Trump administration has imposed a slew of sanctions against ICC officials for their attempts to investigate the US and Israel," CNN reports.
  • Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) introduced a resolution this week calling on the US to join the ICC outright by ratifying the Rome Statute, and to revoke the sanctions and visa bans it has imposed on court officials. It is the first congressional response to Rubio's pledge to dismantle the court.
• The DOJ is subpoenaing New York Times reporters after they published a story about Trump's new Qatari jet. The government spent $400 million in taxpayer dollars making it suitable for use as Air Force One — and then had to sideline it over security concerns when Trump left Turkey after the NATO summit this month. The DOJ said it wants to know who is leaking information to reporters.
  • "The appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects," David McCraw, a lawyer for the Times, said in a statement.
  • CNN reports that chief of staff Susie Wiles and FBI Director Kash Patel personally ran the investigation from what one source called a "war room" in the West Wing — Patel sat in an office next to Wiles' for roughly seven hours — and that White House officials were asked to hand over their phones to investigators on White House grounds. Not all of them did.
• A CNN investigation found that Trump has promoted more than 20 companies on his Truth Social account days after buying stock in those firms – at times announcing government actions that could benefit the companies he just invested in. The White House says outside managers handle all trades and that Trump and his family have no control over them.
• Trump's sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump "have amassed a portfolio of defense technology start-ups that are benefiting from new Pentagon priorities and spending, further entangling the United States' interests and the Trump family's financial fortunes in an area with immense stakes for national security," The Washington Post reports. Their portfolio is reportedly worth $3.2 billion while their father continues to wage war on Iran under false pretenses and without any interest in engaging in good faith negotiations to end it.
• Trump Media is selling Wall Street a paid data feed called the Truth API — the fastest access to Trump's market-moving posts, delivered to paying clients a thousandth of a second before everyone else sees them. It launches August 1, and the company says it has already signed up customers. Trump Media pitched banks and trading firms as much as $100,000 a month for it. The Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust — overseen by his children — holds about 41% of the company. So the president is selling early access to his own announcements, and he owns a plurality of the business collecting the fee.
• Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett have asked Congress to increase the Court's security budget by $29 million. That includes $15 million more for security for their homes and family. Barrett specifically said her family has been targeted.
• Trump's longtime teleprompter operator is being investigated for betting — and making more than $100,000 using Kalshi — using insider information, ABC reports. The White House said the man, Gabriel Perez, is on unpaid leave. Investigators found he bet on more than a dozen speeches over three months. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the conduct "a disgrace."
• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says that every service member 30 and older will undergo… low testosterone testing. Hegseth: "By addressing these health markers early, we're keeping you on the leading edge of lethality."
  • "Five of six men's health experts contacted by Reuters... said they were puzzled by the announcement on testosterone testing and concerned it may lead to unnecessary — or even harmful — treatment."
• While Trump keeps trying to blame vandals for messing up the Reflecting Pool — turns out, as we all suspected — shoddy work is to blame. "The lining of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool peeled away in at least seven places along seams that were created when the material was applied in large rectangular sections, indicating likely problems in how it was installed, according to a Washington Post analysis of visuals and interviews with experts." Several people have been arrested and one has even been indicted for damaging the pool. It's now been drained for repairs and the government will use the same company that did the initial renovation to do the repairs…
• The House voted to make daylight saving permanent. The hotly debated topic has become a priority because of Florida lawmakers. "Many Florida lawmakers extolled the legislation, with the state's chief economic drivers — tourism, recreation, restaurants and golfing — standing to benefit from the extra hours of daylight in the evenings year-round," Politico reports. But, "Agriculture state lawmakers are especially wary of delaying daylight for farmers, while others fear the extra hours of darkness in the morning would pose risks to mental health, public safety and sleep habits."

• Sen. Lindsey Graham died a week ago Saturday after a short and sudden illness and South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster (R) appointed his sister Darline Graham Nordone to serve out the remainder of his term.
• Speaking of which, Sen. Mitch McConnell is apparently alive and well after his office released photos of him in the hospital recovering from a fall. After weeks out of sight, there were rumors that he was actually dead. Kentucky's governor said he received two calls from agencies indicating McConnell had "passed" — which explains where the rumors came from.

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