◼ Once again, President Donald Trump claims that his administration and the Islamic Republic of Iran are close to a peace deal—even though Tehran, without claiming responsibility, downed a U.S. helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz. (Both crew members survived.) Trump initially responded by ordering strikes on Iranian air defenses and radar stations; he later canceled some of them. Speaking from the White House, Trump said that a deal “should get done over the next few days” and that the Strait of Hormuz “will officially open as soon as we sign.” He appears to want a settlement more than the Iranians do. Unfortunately, the Iranians can see it.

◼ Graham Platner won the Democratic Senate nomination in Maine. Despite myriad controversies, Democratic leaders in Washington eventually and shamefully fell in line with his primary campaign. Criticism of Platner began with the revelation that he bore, for 18 years, a tattoo of an SS Totenkopf, which he got, he says, while “carousing” and without knowing what it was. (Although he also claims to be a history buff.) His history of bellicose social media posts and his bullying of girlfriends represent how the elite perceive those who live in trailer parks. Therefore, they reason, he must be a man of the people, and his socialist rhetoric must ring true. In today’s Democratic Party, a Nazi tattoo may well be an error, but an error in the right direction: yes, Hitler was a bad guy, but anyone who once sported a death’s head will not bow to the genocidal, apartheid state that is Israel. He now heads into a general election against GOP Senator Susan Collins. Today, Maine; tomorrow, the world.

◼ Trump nominated Jay Clayton, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, to become the director of national intelligence. Clayton’s legal chops are undeniable: The SDNY is the premier federal law enforcement district in the nation. Clayton also headed the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term, and he was a partner at the elite law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. Still, his intelligence background appears thin, notwithstanding that extensive national security expertise is a statutory requirement for a DNI. The appointment also leaves the SDNY post vacant; Trump will need a new, confirmable U.S. attorney. The president’s hand was forced by his unforced asininity in appointing Bill Pulte, the loyalist at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, as acting DNI following the resignation of Tulsi Gabbard. Pulte has no intelligence experience. His appointment enraged congressional Democrats primarily because of Pulte’s role in Trump’s lawfare against political enemies. They therefore abandoned an agreement to reauthorize the government’s foreign-intelligence-collection authority. The Clayton nomination won’t bring Democrats back on board; nothing but a retraction of Pulte’s acting appointment will. But that’s not how Trump rolls.

◼ Trump nominated Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who has been the acting attorney general since the president pushed Pam Bondi out of that post, to take over the position. Under Blanche, the Justice Department immediately indicted Trump’s archnemesis James Comey on absurd charges, orchestrated a “settlement” of Trump’s farcical $10 billion lawsuit against his own IRS, and attempted to establish a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to make payouts to Capitol rioters and others who were allegedly abused by Biden’s DOJ. Even the somnolent GOP-controlled Congress erupted over this potential slush fund, forcing Blanche to rescind it. Professional ethics rules demand that Blanche, as the government’s lawyer, represent the public interest. In these indecorous episodes, he has instead prioritized fealty to Trump. That quality remains the salient credential for top positions in this administration.

◼ Politicized lawfare and misconduct by the targets of lawfare are not mutually exclusive. That is the lesson of the Justice Department’s prosecution of John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser turned tough detractor. Bolton announced that he will plead guilty to illegally retaining classified information. Bolton kept copious notes that he had made over 17 months working for Trump on highly classified defense and foreign policy matters, using them for his 500-page memoir, The Room Where It Happened, a scathing rebuke of Trump that he rushed to publish prior to the 2020 election. His keeping the notes violated the law. But no one thinks that he would have been charged had he written a book praising Trump. The felony treatment is harsh given that Trump himself escaped prosecution for mishandling classified intelligence, as did Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. David Petraeus and Sandy Berger got misdemeanor slaps on the wrist. The DOJ can argue that Bolton should be imprisoned for up to five years and fined more than $2 million. Bolton, 77, had little choice but to plead guilty. Had he been convicted at trial, the DOJ could have pushed for an even harsher sentence. Bolton has graced the pages of National Review many times, incisively breaking down foreign policy challenges and threats. His imminent guilty plea is sad news, but the incident detailed in the charges reflects a serious lapse of judgment.

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◼ Artificial intelligence shows great economic promise, which naturally means that progressives want to either socialize it or destroy it. Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed that the government take a 50 percent share in cutting-edge AI companies by seizing their stock. He seeks to turn their models into a public resource that bureaucrats can manage on the public’s behalf. Such a scheme would make AI developers inefficient and beholden to politics. Halting the construction of AI data centers entirely—a policy also supported by Sanders and friends—would be even more destructive to U.S. competitiveness. If firms cannot secure computing power domestically, they will find it abroad. American firms may hold a narrow lead in AI, but they are racing against China to push the boundaries of this potentially transformative technology. The only beneficiary of progressives’ crusade against technological progress is the Chinese Communist Party.

◼ One does not need to believe that authorities in California are engaged in fraud—and we have seen no evidence of that—to observe that the manner in which they are running the Golden State’s elections is unacceptable. California’s system is slow, opaque, and nearly incomprehensible for the average voter. It departs from norms that exist in every other state and most other first-world countries. It engenders confusion and mistrust. It is, in short, a national disgrace. Florida, a state of nearly 24 million, is able to announce its winners within hours of the polls closing. California often takes weeks. In 2022 and 2024, it was unclear for a while which party had won the House of Representatives because races in California remained uncalled. By accepting ballots that arrive long after Election Day, allowing signature-curing for up to 22 days, and continually creating new exceptions that favor the tardy, California has made a mockery of the responsibility and agency that we ought to expect from most voters. Worst of all: California’s government seems wholly unbothered by the mess.

◼ To read the press reports, you might think that New York has finally and reluctantly entered the gerrymandering wars. This is bald-faced revisionism. If anything, New York was where this all started. After Democrats took supermajority control of the state senate in 2020, they decided to reclaim the mapmaking power (which they had originally delegated to an “independent” commission) in defiance of the state constitution. Governor Kathy Hochul and her party drew a map so egregiously partisan that the state’s highest court threw it out. Now, Hochul and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries want to draw a 23–3 map in favor of the Democrats, which among other things would carve up Staten Island. “The Empire State will strike back,” Jeffries says. He does know that means they’re the bad guys, right?

◼ Scott Pelley, one of the hosts of CBS’s 60 Minutes, was fired after he attacked his new bosses, Nick Bilton and Bari Weiss, in a staff meeting. Pelley, Bilton wrote in a letter dismissing him for cause, had “hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt.” To these qualities we might reasonably add “arrogance.” Since he was let go, Pelley has revealed himself to be the very caricature of the self-important journalist. Losing his job at 60 Minutes, he told the New York Times, was “like your spouse being murdered.” As for that job? It was apparently no different from a soldier’s. “I have been in combat in Afghanistan,” he insisted in a telephone interview. “I have been in combat in Iraq. I have been in the war zone in Ukraine multiple times, risking my life and the happiness of my family because of my devotion to the broadcast.” Asked whether he had anticipated that his outburst might lead to repercussions, Pelley said “it hadn’t occurred to me. . . . I just didn’t connect the dots.” What a loss to investigative journalism!

◼ Vickrum Digwa, a British Sikh, was found guilty by an English court of the murder of 18-year-old student Henry Nowak in Southampton in December 2025. Digwa had been wearing a small ceremonial dagger under his clothing, as Sikhs have a religious obligation to do, but he also had a much larger knife. Nowak noticed that knife and started filming. An altercation followed (details are hazy), which ended with Digwa fatally stabbing Nowak and filming his attempt to escape. That was bad enough, but what really outraged many Brits was the police response. Digwa’s brother had called them, falsely claiming that his brother had been racially abused. These claims were rejected at the trial, but not by the police who arrived at the scene. Trained to believe such allegations, they did not realize the seriousness of Nowak’s injuries and ignored his repeated complaints that he’d been stabbed and couldn’t breathe. Nowak died handcuffed in the street. His death is down to his murderer, the squalor of his last moments to the practices of a state wedded to multiculturalism.

◼ Senators Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell recruited Alabama football coach Nick Saban, Notre Dame Athletics Director Pete Bevacqua, and Utah Utes defensive powerhouse Lance Holtzclaw, among others, to testify in support of their bipartisan Protect College Sports Act. The act aims to reduce the legal chaos of the collegiate sports landscape and restore the “integrity” of NCAA athletics in response to the ballooning program costs and out-of-control roster turnover seen in moneymaking programs like football and men’s basketball. The act would limit student-athletes to only one consequence-free transfer and would codify the House v. NCAA revenue-sharing cap that lets colleges pay their student-athletes up to $20.5 million total. The act would also ensure student-athletes’ right to profit from their name, image, and likeness. It would accomplish this with minimal federal intrusion by granting the NCAA an antitrust exemption to enforce these rules. All in all, it preserves the best of the recent changes while containing their downsides.

◼ Scholar and theologian Robert Louis Wilken was one of America’s foremost historians of Christianity. He taught at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pa., before becoming the William R. Kenan Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Virginia, where he founded the St. Anselm Institute for Catholic Thought. Wilken was received into the Catholic Church in 1994. In his last major work, Liberty in the Things of God (2019), he traced the modern concept of religious freedom back to 16th- and 17th-century Christian thought and argued that it preceded the Enlightenment. Never dogmatic, he encouraged believers of all kinds to engage with other faiths and their rich traditions. Dead at 89. R.I.P.

◼ Back in his salad days as a GOP intellectual, Newt Gingrich praised the work of historian Gordon Wood, particularly his book The Radicalism of the American Revolution. Wood, amused, observed that it was the kiss of death for his reputation among his colleagues. Hardly—Wood’s intelligence, his learning, and his accessible prose were acknowledged by all. The truth adjacent to his remark was that he represented perhaps the last of a generation of academics who taught the founding period as if it mattered and was worthy: an academic bubble that withstood the torrents of theory and leftism that swept through the humanities before and after the turn of the century. When the New York Times’ 1619 Project sought to paint all of America from the 17th century on as irredeemably racist, Wood condemned the misrepresentation. In person, he was genial and collegial. He was struck down, tragically, in an accident in a supermarket parking lot. Dead at 92. R.I.P.