Good morning, and happy Juneteenth. I’m Thom Hartmann.
Iran peace talks have completely collapsed after Israel attacked Lebanon. Swing-state Trump voters are calling the Iran war a waste. Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico is hammering Ken Paxton over a child sex abuse plea deal, and Donald Trump is warning that he’ll be the last Republican president unless the Senate kills the filibuster and passes his draconian voter ID bill.
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Iran Peace Talks Fall Apart After Israel Attacks Lebanon
Peace talks between the United States and Iran collapsed Friday before they could even begin, and it’s because Israel spent the night bombing southern Lebanon.
Iranian officials were supposed to travel to Switzerland to broker a peace deal. They didn’t go. They made it clear that Israel has to cease its attacks in Lebanon before Iran begins negotiations. U.S. Vice President JD Vance also canceled his own trip, with the White House initially blaming “logistical issues” before the fuller picture emerged.
Here’s what happened on the ground. The Israeli military struck targets across southern and eastern Lebanon overnight. Lebanon’s Health Ministry says at least 21 people were killed. Israel says it lost four soldiers, including a lieutenant colonel, in a tank attack.
Each side is accusing the other of violating the ceasefire. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued the standard statement that Israel “will not tolerate attacks” and will “exact a very heavy price.” Hezbollah says its attacks were defensive, responding to Israeli forces.
This is why the Lebanon dimension of this conflict was always described as the most precarious part of the Iran deal. Neither Israel nor Hezbollah signed the interim agreement. It was supposed to stop their fighting anyway. Iran has made absolutely clear that they will return to full-scale conflict over Lebanon.
The interim deal had already halted direct hostilities between the U.S. and Iran, reopened the Strait of Hormuz to oil tankers, and unfroze some Iranian assets. But the future talks that were supposed to produce a permanent deal, including restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program, are now on hold. And the 60-day clock built into the agreement to negotiate a nuclear framework keeps ticking.
There’s now a deeper rift between Israel and the United States. Trump has reportedly grown increasingly frustrated with Netanyahu, who has resisted any withdrawal from southern Lebanon and insists Israeli forces will stay for as long as security requires. That won’t fly with Iran. And without Tehran’s cooperation, there’s no deal to end the war. Keep an eye on this one.
George Washington warned in his Farewell Address that when a nation forms a passionate attachment to another country, it gets dragged into wars and quarrels that were never its own. That’s exactly what we’re watching, with Netanyahu’s decision to bomb Lebanon now deciding whether America gets peace, and not one American getting a vote in it.
Swing State Trump Voters Agree Iran War Was Waste of Time and Resources
Swing state voters who put Trump back in the White House are not happy with Trump’s blunder in Iran.
NPR sat in on two online focus groups Tuesday with swing voters in Wisconsin, all of them featuring voters who went for Biden in 2020 and flipped to Trump in 2024. These groups were conducted right as Trump was announcing his agreement to end the Iran war.
Not one of the 13 participants said the conflict was worth it. Nine of them said the United States is coming out of this weaker than before it started.
33-year-old independent Corey M said Trump “accomplished the square root of nothing,” adding the war “hurt our economy and increased expenses for the everyday American.”
Another participant, Sam M., said from what he could tell, the Obama-era nuclear deal that Trump tore up in his first term was a better deal for America than whatever we’re walking away with now.
Voters described cutting vacations, forgoing eating at restaurants and canceling subscriptions just to make ends meet due to the spike in gas prices. A 63-year-old independent said she had to restructure her entire health insurance plan to lower her premiums.
The latest NPR/PBS/Marist poll found that only a third of Americans approve of how Trump is handling the economy. In these focus groups, nine of the thirteen voters said they’re more anxious about the economy now than before Trump took office. Ten said the president is “out of touch” with their concerns. And all but one said Trump himself is responsible for higher prices following the war.
Rich Thau, who has been moderating these swing voter focus groups since March, said the participants were “never on board with the war” at any point. This is what a collapsing Republican coalition looks like. And with just a handful of months before the midterms, these voters will have fresh memories of how Trump made their life harder for no reason.
Dwight Eisenhower, a general who actually won a war, said in 1953 that every rocket fired and every warship launched is a theft from the people who go hungry and the kids whose schools never get built. These Wisconsin voters did that same math at their own kitchen tables, and they came back with the answer Ike gave seventy years ago.
Talarico Goes All-In on Attacking Ken Paxton’s Sweetheart Deal for Child Molester
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico is making Ken Paxton’s handling of a child sex abuse case the centerpiece of his campaign.
Talarico stood on the steps of the McLennan County Courthouse in Waco on Thursday and demanded that Paxton release all internal communications related to a plea deal his office struck with Adam Dean Hoffman, who was charged with repeatedly sexually abusing a young boy.
Paxton’s deal required Hoffman to serve just 30 days in jail, admit to the abuse and surrender his law license. He did not have to register as a sex offender. The visiting judge in the case had already rejected an earlier deal that would have had Hoffman serve just one day in jail.
When the full story surfaced last month, it generated immediate national outrage. The mother of the victim, the judge and even Republican lawmakers were beyond upset. And now Talarico is making sure nobody forgets about it, saying: “If there’s anything that all Texans can agree on, Democrats and Republicans, progressives and conservatives, it’s that no one, not even the attorney general of Texas, should be able to cover up crimes against children.”
Talarico went on to call it an “Epstein-style sweetheart deal” and demanded Paxton “release the Hoffman files,” specifically every text message, email, internal memo, and document related to the case.
Paxton’s campaign responded by accusing Talarico of re-traumatizing a child victim for political gain. And prosecutors in office defended the deal saying it was in the best interest of the child, who told them he wanted to move on with his life and not be forced to face his abuser in court.
But Talarico is seizing on the connection between Hoffman’s defense attorney and Nate Paul, a campaign donor and friend of Paxton who was at the center of the attorney general’s failed impeachment case. Paxton was accused of using his office to help Paul in exchange for personal benefits, including a job for Paxton’s mistress and even some home renovations. The victim’s mother said publicly that she believes her son’s case was “treated differently” because of that connection.
Hoffman’s attorney, Gerry Morris, has flatly denied any special treatment and says he never communicated with Paxton about the case in any way. But the political damage is already done, and Talarico clearly believes this is a winning issue.
It’s worth noting that Paxton already faced this same attack from Republican primary opponent John Cornyn, who ran ads saying Paxton “failed to protect” victims. But that was a Republican primary colored by Trump’s endorsement of Paxton. The general election is a different calculation entirely.
In 1935 the Supreme Court said in Berger versus United States that a prosecutor’s job isn’t to win, it’s to see that justice is done, because the power to charge a crime is held in trust for the public. When that power gets used to quietly bury a case against a man who confessed to molesting a child, the trust hasn’t just been broken, it’s been handed to whoever the attorney general happens to owe a favor.
Trump Says He’ll Be the Last Republican President Unless His Voter ID Bill Is Passed
Trump is issuing an ultimatum to his own party: kill the filibuster and pass his SAVE Act, or he’ll be the last Republican president America ever has.
Trump wrote on his Nazi-infested social media site that Republicans who don’t want to terminate the filibuster are “fools,” that Democrats will end it “within minutes of taking office” if they regain power, and that “the Republican Party will never win another election.”
Republicans currently hold a 53-to-47 Senate edge. Eliminating the filibuster would let them pass virtually anything without a single Democratic vote, rather than have to find 60 votes to pass legislation.
Trump’s SAVE Act would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote and mandatory photo ID to cast a ballot. The bill passed the House in February but has stalled in the Senate.
The bill’s fine print is more than a little concerning. Women who changed their names after being married face serious disenfranchisement. The bill has drawn opposition from both Democrats and even the family of Martin Luther King Jr.
Trump has made clear this is personal. After Democrats ran the table in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races and the New York City mayoral race last November, he demanded voter ID legislation and the banning of mail-in ballots.
The filibuster isn’t in the Constitution. It emerged from a parliamentary accident in 1806 and has evolved into the procedural tool we know today. Ending it would be permanent, and would benefit whichever party holds the Senate majority. As of right now, Senate GOP leadership is still committed to the filibuster.
Here’s the part they leave out. For most of the last century the filibuster’s main job was strangling civil rights and anti-lynching bills, and Strom Thurmond still holds the record with more than twenty-four hours spent trying to block the Civil Rights Act of 1957. So on Juneteenth of all days, sit with what it means that Trump wants to scrap that rule not to expand the vote, but to ram through a bill that could knock millions of married women and working people off the rolls.
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I’m Thom Hartmann. The fight is here. Thank you for being in it. Have a great weekend.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Iran War Cost Thousands of Lives and $132 Billion. The New York Times on Friday broke down the total human and financial cost of President Donald Trump’s war with Iran. The war resulted in the deaths of more than 3,000 Iranians, and Israeli attacks on Lebanon killed another 3,700 people. Meanwhile, 13 American servicemen and women died, along with 26 Israeli service members. Thousands more in the region have been injured. And American taxpayers and consumers have had to pay an additional $132 billion for both the war itself and from higher prices resulting from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran Announces Plans to Impose Tolls on Strait of Hormuz Traffic. Following the 60-day negotiating period, Iran’s government announced this week it will begin collecting tolls from ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz in order to manage the cost of operating the waterway that serves as a key route for 20 percent of the world’s oil supply. Prior to the United States’ and Israel’s initial attack on Iran on February 28, the strait allowed ships to pass through toll-free.
‘Somber’ Senate Republicans in ‘Dismay’ Over Trump’s Agreement with Iran. Multiple Republican senators on Capitol Hill are reportedly feeling defeated after President Trump signed a memorandum of understanding with the Iranian government that is being widely heralded by Iran as an historic victory. The deal allows for Iran to access $300 billion from a “redevelopment” fund and lifts all U.S. sanctions on the Iranian government, while Iran gets to keep its ballistic missile arsenal and its enriched uranium stockpile with only a vague promise that it won’t develop a nuclear weapon. One unnamed Republican told The Hill that “there is a high level of dismay” in the Senate Republican Conference, and was pessimistic that an actual firm agreement Congress can vote on would ever emerge given the fragile nature of ongoing peace talks.
Scientists Fight Back Against Trump’s Plan to Subject Research Grants to Political Scrutiny. Last month, the Trump administration announced that all federal grants for scientific research would have to be approved by political appointees, rather than scientific experts. The administration’s new rule specifically states that research projects must “demonstrably advance the president’s policy priorities.” The group Stand Up for Science is now urging Americans to weigh in the rule via public comment on the Office of Management and Budget’s website, which has already recorded more than 31,000 comments against the rule. The group is also contemplating litigation to stop the rule from taking effect, and recently held a strategy call with more than 50 attorneys across the U.S.
U.S. Senator’s Son Gets $30 Million Investment After Graduating from College. 22 year-old Theodore Gillibrand — the son of U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) — just received a $30 million investment from the venture firm Lux Capital to launch his own derivatives exchange after graduating from Stanford University on Sunday. Theodore’s company — the American Perpetuals Exchange Corporation — deals in “perpetuals,” which allow investors to bet on the price of assets without actually holding them. Theodore’s company got a valuation of $300 million from the deal. Sen. Gillibrand was a key supporter of the pro-crypto Genius Act, which is a landmark bill Trump signed into law this year regulating stablecoins, which is a cryptocurrency pegged to real-world assets like the U.S. dollar. The crypto industry is a major supporter of the perpetuals industry.
