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The First Casualty of War...

When it comes to military conflict, governments have been downplaying the bad, and exaggerating the good, since at least the Napoleonic period. The Trump administration is pleased to continue that "proud" tradition, as much as it can. How viable that is—in a world with the Internet, social media, and a huge number of people who would like to embarrass and undermine this administration—is an open question.

We suspect the war is going poorly, considerably more so than most Americans know at the moment. Here are the reasons for our supposition:

  1. Yesterday, Donald Trump refused to answer questions about whether the ceasefire is still in effect. We can only see one interpretation here: That the ceasefire is NOT in effect, but Trump does not want to admit that because of his silly claims that only "fighting" days count toward the 60-day limit imposed by the War Powers Act.

  2. Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth insist that no American military bases have been damaged during the war. It appears that the true number is not "zero," it's 16.

  3. Over the weekend, Trump got on his always-compensating-for-something social media platform and posted this:

    It is a picture of Trump, in sunglasses, with some sort of automatic weapon, and a pile of debris behind him that is on fire. It says 'Iran can't get their act together. They don't know how to sign a nonnuclear deal. They better get smart soon! President DJT NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!'

    It's established, at this point, that whenever Trump does this kind of peacocking, it's because he's actually feeling very anxious and insecure—right?

  4. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who has been toting more Iran water than anyone else up on the Hill, and who has access to information that is not publicly available, did a 180 yesterday and said that he's changed his mind, and now he thinks the U.S. should not invade Kharg Island. Instead, he wants to see the U.S. provide guns to the citizens of Iran, so they can rise up and overthrow the regime. Because THAT sort of arrangement always works out so well. In any event, such a dramatic dialing-down of the Senator's hawkishness is probably instructive.

Those, then, are the latest developments on the warfront.

Also, since we are on the subject, we had a piece last week in which we included this comment: "Iran wants to go back to the 7th century and Trump is willing to meet them about halfway. Siege warfare, which is what he is aiming at, went out of style in the 15th century when the widespread availability of gunpowder made it possible for the attackers to blow up a castle's walls rather than waiting until the residents starved to death." We've written variants of that comment a few times; it's meant to be a quick and at least moderately clever way of reminding readers that this is a fundamentalist and theocratic nation that aspires to do things as they were done in the time of Muhammad (who lived from c.570 - 632).

Still, some readers were not happy. For example, D.G. in Sandwich, NH:

I was very disappointed to read your comments about Iran. You parrot the Trump Administration's propaganda to a 'T.' To wit: You imply that there's a rift between the ayatollahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). This is unproven. You state that 30,000 rioters were killed this past winter. This is an unproven exaggeration. You state that Iran is operating with a 7th century mindset. Iran/Persia is an extremely sophisticated society which has been around for millennia.

Or S.A.K. in Karnataka, India:

I've seen (V) claim repeatedly over the past few weeks that Iran wants to go back to the 7th century. However, that claim, on closer inspection, is nothing more than a condescending trope. A few points to dispel it:

All this (and much more) despite the crippling American sanctions, which are essentially organized looting.

Normally, we would have run these letters in the Sunday mailbag. But there is another letter that we wanted to pass along, from someone who clearly knows this subject better than we do, that is too long for the mailbag. So, we present it here. The floor is yours, D.S. in London, England, UK:

I'm a long-time reader, but couldn't in my wildest dreams believe that this is the subject that has finally pushed me to write in.

I did enjoy your zinger (Zenger?), when you said that "Iran wants to go back to the 7th century and Trump is willing to meet them about half way." However, since I've spotted this "joke" about Iran on a number of previous occasions, that don't appear to be intended as a friendly running joke (like the ones about the Canadian invasion), I think I should ever so politely object.

I should note for the record that I care nothing for the Iranian regime, I've no ties, never been there—and any regime that ruthless deserves no friends.

However, I think it's an utter misunderstanding of Iran to believe even for a second that the ayatollahs want to return the country to the 7th century. This is a vivid formulation, but a trope that continues the general Western misunderstanding of several centuries of modernization/reform in the Islamic world (see, for example, Christopher de Bellaigue's The Islamic Enlightenment: The Modern Struggle Between Faith and Reason).

It also ignores what the Islamic Republic itself says that it is trying to achieve and what its formal policy documents commit it to. Whatever one thinks of the regime's politics, repression, or regional behavior, its own strategic texts are quite explicit that the ideological project is modernization without Westernization, rather than any rejection of modernity, per se. By way of illustration:

This is what the Islamic Republic's leaders said they wanted. It is, of course, quite another thing to believe that they are capable of achieving meaningful economy-wide modernization and reform. By the end of 2025 (i.e., well before this current war), Iran's position was already lamentable; and since much of this was due to mismanagement, they only have themselves to blame. More than 80% of the country faces water stress (including Tehran itself), mostly due to awful policies on water use and mismanagement of dam projects. Despite holding the world's second-largest gas and third-largest oil reserves, Iran has seen chronic electricity and gas shortages and rolling blackouts since 2024-25. This is largely due to underinvestment in infrastructure and rent-seeking behavior by the IRGC. The economy remains utterly dependent on hydrocarbon exports—which are now blockaded.

As I said, I hold no candle for the current Iranian regime. Their coercive social controls, diabolical human-rights record, and their propensity for making friends with militias, terrorists and hostile state actors (from Russia to Yemen) is all awful. But it cheapens debate if we caricature the ayatollahs as simply aspiring to the 7th century, or for "72 virgins."

I greatly appreciated your corrective posts about Chinese technological progress over the past few months—perhaps it's also worth something similar re: Iran. After all, it's a country of nearly 100m people, almost none of whom want to live in the past.

We thank everyone who wrote in to enlighten us. At least we (and the readers) can try to understand, even if certain fellows in not-quite-round offices have no interest in doing so. (Z)

Red State Redistricting Is Moving Ahead with Lightning Speed

Well, that did not take long. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) thinks that he is a viable Republican presidential candidate in 2028, despite the ample evidence from 2024 that GOP voters are not buying what he is selling. And he has determined that the key to being a Republican hero, and to paying fealty to the Dear Leader, is to gerrymander the living daylights out of the Florida House district map.

DeSantis "anticipated" the Supreme Court decision that further hollowed out the Voting Rights Act, and so was ready to hit the ground running with a map that rips apart several districts that previously could not have been ripped apart. The map was approved by the Florida legislature yesterday, and then promptly signed into law by the Governor. So, big win for Captain Ron, right?

Maybe, or... maybe not. The immediate problem is that U.S. law and jurisprudence is 100% OK with partisan gerrymanders, but Florida law and jurisprudence is not. In fact, Florida voters specifically approved an anti-gerrymandering initiative that forbade shenanigans like the ones DeSantis just pulled. So, at very nearly the moment he applied his signature, a lawsuit was filed in Florida court, asking for the map to be struck down. We have no prediction as to what will happen, but the following outcomes all appear to be possible: DeSantis wins in court, DeSantis loses in court, and the decision takes long enough that the new map can't be used this year.

There are also a couple of longer-term problems. The first, of course, is that if the new map is implemented, it could turn out to be a dummymander. Florida's operating with pretty small margins of error, and in a blue wave, DeSantis could come to rue the day he waded into the Gerrymandering Olympics. Needless to say, he won't be a GOP hero if he ends up costing his party seats. Truth be told, he would probably be happier if the new map cannot be used until 2028. Then, he gets to "own the libs" without risking any actual consequences until it's too late for them to affect his presidential run.

The other longer-term problem is that if DeSantis really and truly thinks that he and Trump can somehow be buddies again, and that Trump might just pass off the MAGA scepter in 2028, then the Governor is delusional. Trump loves, loves, loves to string someone along like this, and then to pull the rug out from under them. Remember this photo of not-quite-Secretary-of-State Mitt Romney, where the story had a subhead "What's for dinner, Donald?" "Your dignity."


Donald Trump with Mitt Romney

It's hard to imagine a Republican Trump would more like to see end up on his ass than DeSantis. We tend to doubt that Trump will happily hand over the throne to anyone not named Trump, but if he does, there are at least a dozen people in line ahead of DeSantis, starting with his fellow Floridian Marco Rubio.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court yesterday told Louisiana it could get right to work on the district maps there. Yes, the ruling gutting the remaining portions of the VRA came down last week, but technically, it's up to a lower level of the court system to apply that ruling. Normally, SCOTUS waits 32 days to return a case to a lower court, but this time it decided to chop that down to 2 days. This led to some sniping between Associate Justices Samuel Alito and Ketanji Brown Jackson yesterday, with Alito decreeing that speed is of the essence under the circumstances, and Jackson suggesting that speed is only "of the essence," it seems, when it benefits the Republican Party.

We're just going on gut feel here, but our sense is that Jackson has the right of it. SCOTUS could very well have kept this decision under their hats (well, under their robes) until well after the Louisiana primaries, so as to give 2 full years for any consequences and/or countersuits to play out. It sure looks like they rushed to announce, and then they rushed to put the lower court in a position to take action. Meanwhile, note that we wrote that DeSantis "anticipated" the ruling. The Governor was working with a tight timeline, since the Florida legislature is in special session, and yet was willing to risk wasting precious time on a map that might not be legal. Did someone tip him off as to both the finding and the timing of the decision? Maybe someone with the code name Arenceclay Omasthay? We report, you decide. (Z)

Mifepristone by Mail Could Be on Its Way Out

Louisiana really wants its 15 minutes of fame—or infamy, as the case may be. Eviscerating minority voting rights nationwide wasn't sufficient; now they want to dictate for the country how women can obtain the drug used in medication abortions.

The state sued the FDA to reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone—one of the drugs, along with misoprostol, used for a medication abortion. In 2023, the FDA formally revised the dispensing requirements to allow doctors and other medical personnel to prescribe mifepristone via telehealth. The drug could then be obtained at a local pharmacy or by mail. Louisiana, where abortion is banned at all stages, claims that the FDA's revisions undermine its ban since patients in Louisiana are receiving the pills by mail. They asked the court to reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement, which would then make mailing mifepristone illegal.

The federal district court agreed that the availability of mifepristone by mail undercuts Louisiana's ban, but declined to stay the federal regulation. Instead, it granted the FDA's request to stay the entire case while it completed its review of the 2023 revisions.

But never fear, the Fifth Circuit is here! In a unanimous ruling by two Donald Trump appointees and one George W. Bush appointee, the appeals court struck down the FDA's revisions allowing the drug to be dispensed remotely and obtained by mail. If this sounds familiar, it should. In 2022, this same circuit upheld a lower court's stay of the informal version of the regulation relaxing the in-person requirement. This was reversed by the Supreme Court, but only on the grounds that the doctors who had brought the suit lacked standing.

In 2023, the revised regulation was formalized and this time, Louisiana's attorney general sued for the state. She argues Louisiana has standing because the state allegedly had to spend Medicaid Emergency care funds to care for women who have allegedly had "complications"—which they erroneously define as a visit to the ER—from taking mifepristone. (Importantly, anti-abortion groups always conflate a visit to the ER with "complications"—usually an ER visit is for pain management or reassurance that all is well, and not a result of any problem or complication.) Even then, Louisiana could only point to two women who visited the ER in all of 2025 after taking mifepristone, out of tens of thousands of medication abortions in the state.

While the Trump administration has so far been defending FDA's actions, it has also provided some helpful ammunition to the plaintiff and the court. In September 2025, Trump's FDA began what it called a "comprehensive review" of the 2023 revisions to the dispensing requirements on the grounds that there was a "lack of adequate consideration underlying the prior approvals." The Court seized on this "admission" to hold that the regulation is likely "arbitrary and capricious" and should be "stayed" until that review was completed. The Court also agreed that Louisiana is "irreparably harmed" by remote prescription because it undermines the state's policy that "every unborn child is a human being from the moment of conception and is, therefore, a legal person." The Court doesn't address why Louisiana's policy takes precedence over the needs and policies of other states.

The effect of the ruling is that it applies nationwide. But wait, how can that be, you may ask, when the Supreme Court doesn't allow nationwide injunctions anymore? Well, this case was brought under the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), 5 USC Sec. 705, and Louisiana asked for a stay of the regulation on the grounds that the FDA failed to follow the proper procedure in approving the 2023 revised regulation. And in Trump v. CASA (the birthright citizenship case, which struck down a nationwide injunction of Trump's XO), the Supreme Court saw this one coming and explicitly carved out an exception for stays of agency actions under the APA. Ta da!

The Supreme Court has since granted a stay of the Fifth Circuit's decision, at least for a week while they take briefing on the topic. But given this Court's overt hostility to medication abortion, it's unlikely to concern itself with issues of consistency in adjudicating FDA drug evaluations. With an assist from the Trump administration, it can also ignore the decades of evidence of mifepristone's safety that underpinned the 2023 revision, and simply accept the new FDA claim that more study is needed. (There are ads that gleefully note all the scary side effects of the drugs to treat, say, moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, but no one's trying to yank those from shelves.)

As for the fate of prescription by telehealth, clinics are already planning a switch to misoprostol only for dispensing by mail if needed. Ironically, using misoprostol only instead of the combination of mifepristone plus misoprostol is only 80% effective and slightly less safe as opposed to the 94% effective rate of the combination drug protocol. But sure, this is all about women's health and safety (cough, cough). If mailing mifepristone is banned, that might just come up a time or two in the midterm campaigns. Who knows? (L)

Xavier Becerra, the Latino Joe Biden

Politico had a piece yesterday headlined "How Xavier Becerra became the Joe Biden of California's governor race." The basic idea is that Becerra, like Biden, is a moderate establishment politician who was left for dead, but who nonetheless remained in the race, until surging at just the right time.

As we read the piece, we alternated between thinking "yeah, the two campaigns kinda do have the same beats" and "eh, maybe this author is working a bit too hard to fit the Becerra peg into the Biden hole." In any event, it gives us a quick excuse to do a rundown of the current state of the race, according to the pollsters. There have been five polls since Betty Yee dropped out (not that the dispersal of her 1% support should have had much impact). Here they are, from newest to oldest, including the six candidates who have polled above 5% in at least one poll:

Pollster Hilton (R) Bianco (R) Becerra (D) Steyer (D) Porter (D) Mahan (D)
Evitarus 18% 14% 18% 12% 8% 7%
SurveyUSA 20% 12% 10% 18% 8% 7%
Gudelunas Strategies 23% 13% 24% 15% 10% 6%
CBS News/YouGov 16% 10% 13% 15% 9% 4%
EMC Research 20% 14% 21% 17% 8% 8%

A few observations:

California doesn't head to the polls until June, but we'll be watching this one throughout the month of May, because assuming a Democrat is elected, they are ex officio Donald Trump's main nemesis. (Z)

The Political Scandal... That Wasn't?

Someone at CNN, probably an intern, did the yeoman-like work of combing through the social media history of state Senator, and would-be U.S. Senator, Mallory McMorrow (D-MI). They found a bunch of deleted tweets from the mid-2010s that included the following:

Those are the shocking revelations, the dirt that CNN was able to dig up, by going through deleted tweets that were more than a decade old.

Obviously, we are extremely unimpressed with this sort of "investigative" reporting. Social media is a curious beast, an odd combination of diary, therapist and combat sports. In contrast to getting caught, say, posing for a yearbook photo in blackface, it's really hard to ascribe too much meaning to what someone might write in these particular fora. Particularly when they are still pretty young (McMorrow was in her late twenties) and are likely coping with the upheavals that involve moving to a whole new state with a whole new culture and a whole new climate and a whole new job, etc.

We have wondered, in past items, what the political impact of "old social media" would be on political campaigns, since we are just now really entering into an era where candidates might have a decade-long social media footprint. McMorrow seems to be weathering her particular storm without much damage. In fact, her history of calling Trump a Nazi might actually be helpful among Democratic voters (but note, Michigan has open primaries so Republicans can vote in it if they wish). Her current political rival, Abdul El-Sayed, had a similar situation last year, also prompted by CNN digging through the Wayback Machine, in which it turns out he expressed support for "Defund the Police." He's weathered it, too. And, of course, Graham Platner (D) in Maine seems to have overcome his social media indiscretions, as well, even though they were worse than McMorrow's or El-Sayed's by a fair margin.

It would seem, then, that we have a pretty good preliminary answer to the question: Social media skeletons turn to dust quite rapidly. We cannot say we are surprised by that. We suspect that most people who might take note of a candidate's social media feed are themselves on social media, and know that if they too were subjected to the same scrutiny, it would turn up some embarrassing stuff. Alternatively, it could be that given the vile stuff that is published to Truth Social on a daily basis, it's hard to get worked up about statements that were only moderately provocative, and were made while Barack Obama was still president.

Oh, and as long as we are on the subject, there hasn't been all that much polling of the Michigan Senate race recently—only three polls in the entire month of April, and none since April 19. Those three April polls report the following results: (1) Rep. Haley Stevens (D) is in first place, well ahead of McMorrow, and slightly ahead of El-Sayed; (2) Stevens is in third place, well behind the other two candidates, and (3) it's a dead heat, with less than a point separating all three candidates.

In other words, the polls are all over the place, and they all have roughly 35% of voters undecided. So, it could be anyone's race on the Democratic side. On the Republican side, it's pretty clearly going to be former representative Mike Rogers. (Z)


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