Breaking news keeps interfering with my plans. I have a number of planned articles that haven’t gotten finished in recent weeks because something else has come up to grab my attention.
This week, the obvious attention-grabber is war. Here we are, involved in another Middle Eastern war. Saturday, President Trump announced that US warplanes had bombed Iranian nuclear facilities. Maybe this will be a one-and-done situation, as Trump and his administration sometimes seem to hope. Maybe Iran will take its punch-in-the-nose and go on about its business. Or maybe Trump will push for regime change in Iran, which might make us responsible for the regime that follows, as we were in Iraq and Afghanistan. Or maybe we’ll be happy with a large oil-rich failed state.
I often warn about the dangers of speculation that purports to be news coverage. It’s always important to separate what we know from what we hope or fear. Speculation at best is a poor use of your time, and at worst can make you crazy about possibilities that never manifest. So I’ll try to discipline myself. Rather than claim to know things, I will just raise “Questions to Ask at the Start of a War”. That article probably won’t appear until 11 or so EDT.
In the meantime, I’m going ahead with another article based on breaking news: the Supreme Court’s refusal to strike down Tennessee’s law banning gender-affirming care. “The Court fails trans youth” will summarize both what should have happened and what did happen. I’m hoping to get that out by 10.
That still leaves a few things for the weekly summary: new outrages in the Big Beautiful Bill, the continuing military occupation of Los Angeles, what Trump plans for ICE, the cases we’re still waiting for at the end of the Supreme Court’s term, and a few other things. That may not appear until after noon.
The Weekly Sift 