They thought I wasn’t thinking clearly, so they sweetened the deal — what if reliving a year meant you got an extra year of life at the end? I still didn’t hesitate. There was no year I would go back for, not even in exchange for more time. Growing up with mental health struggles, I spent most of my younger years trying to fast-forward. I never wanted to go back.

It wasn’t until I got sober that my answer changed. Now I would take my friends’ deal in a heartbeat — even for my first year sober, which I spent white-knuckling through meetings and crying in my car in the parking lot. Life hasn’t gotten easier. In some ways it’s gotten more difficult, and definitely more complicated (especially since having a child). But I’ve been awake for it, and thus able to witness the moments of joy and beauty.

Most of us live as though our time were infinite. Death is something that happens to other people. We put off the trip or delay the hard conversation because there is always supposed to be more time. The writer Oliver Burkeman did the math nobody wants to do. If you live to be 80 years old, you get about 4,000 weeks on earth. The number sounds like a typo (I have done the math to check because I didn’t believe it!). But it’s true. I’ve already spent more than a third of mine.

We think 4,000 weeks is small only because we’re comparing it with forever. But that was never a possibility. Burkeman’s point is that the real comparison is the alternative: never being born at all. Against that, 4,000 weeks is a staggering amount of time. What if the time limit isn’t the problem? It might be the thing that makes any of it count.

Biohacking and optimization content promises us that if we work hard enough, track our progress enough, get up at 5 a.m., do meal prep, build the perfect routine, we’ll finally have enough time to do everything we care about. The whole genre runs on the idea that the limit isn’t real, it’s just a problem you haven’t solved yet. So when you can’t fit it all in, it registers not as a fact about being human, but only as proof you haven’t tried hard enough.

So instead of trying to savor every moment, I want you to pick things you will not spend time on or worry about. I do not spend a lot of time getting dressed. I skip makeup and throw on workout clothes most days, and I do not worry about what my daughter wears to school. If she wants to wear a mismatched bathing suit over pants — as long as she’s dressed for the weather — go for it! I would rather put my energy towards making sure she learns how to swim.

Maybe for you it’s a spotless house or elaborate meals. You’re already neglecting plenty by accident, so instead of feeling guilty about that, use it as evidence of the unimportance of what you’re not paying attention to and make the choice to let it go. Otherwise, stuck in the impossible belief that you’ll one day have time for everything, you’ll spend a good chunk of your time beating yourself up for not getting there.

Time is finite. You have only so many weeks. You don’t need to live your life with a countdown over your head, but start picking things you definitely don’t care about so you can show up more fully for those that you do.

Welcome back to the community open thread, your space to connect, process the news, and chat about what’s top of mind for you. Now that it’s officially summer, how’s everyone planning on enjoying the season — are you looking forward to traveling, or just embracing a slower pace to the days? Sound off in the comments below.

This community is for paid subscribers, and we’d love to have you join us! The goal is to create a safe and welcoming environment for everyone, which means speaking to and treating each other with respect in the comments.

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— The Preamble Editorial Team

Every spring, at a festival called the Mounichia, Athenians brought round cakes to Artemis, goddess of the moon, with little torches stuck around the rim so the whole thing glowed. This ritual shows up in the works of ancient writers and on Greek vase paintings of women carrying the glowing cakes in procession. The ritual — which was tied to the spring and the notion of rebirth — may have been one of the earliest inspirations for the birthday cakes we celebrate with today. The candles on Artemis’s cakes were meant to mimic moonlight and carry prayers skyward.

Though a forerunner to modern cake, the ancient cake looked nothing like what we get in a bakery these days or bake at home. The earliest “cakes” were closer to sweetened bread — grain, maybe a little honey. The Bible mentions cakes of figs and raisins, too (1 Chronicles 12:40). Food historians don’t agree on when the first real cake showed up, but most tell the same broad story: cake evolved from bread and honey.

Cake was sacred before it became festive. In the ancient world, sweet cakes were baked as offerings to the gods — the Greeks carried honey cakes to their temples, and the Romans took another step: linking it to birthday celebrations, first only for their emperor in the early period of the Roman Empire but subsequently extended to wealthy commoners.

But the tradition didn’t take off right away. After the fall of Rome and the rise of Christianity, early Christians saw celebrating a person’s birthday as a pagan Roman habit. Instead, through much of the Middle Ages, Europeans marked their saint’s day or name day — the feast day of the saint they were named for — instead of the day they were born. Lighting candles had long been an act of devotion — in Catholic Europe, one lit them for the saints. The personal birthday — and the cake and candles with it — didn’t really resurface until early-modern Europe — and by the 1700s it had a clear home: Germany.

The cake as we know it

By the 18th century, German families were holding kinderfeste, birthday parties for children, with a candle on the cake for each year of the child’s life plus one extra. The burning candles would be replaced all day long until the cake was eaten. Kinderfeste came about during a period when people began to treat childhood as something “special” and worth celebrating, which gave the birthday new weight. That understanding of childhood has endured into the modern era, along with birthday celebrations. Blowing out candles and making a silent wish, as historian Marie Nicola notes, transformed the religious practice of lighting candles for devotion into something domestic and secular.

The birthday cake in America

In the 19th century, as German immigrants came over to America, they brought the candles-on-cake custom with them and it took hold in the US.

But it stayed a wealthy family’s affair for a while. Around the 1830s, birthday celebrations with family and friends, cakes, and gifts were primarily popular with wealthy Protestant families in the United States, and later trickled down the social ladder.

Until the mid-19th century, Americans paid little attention to exact age, as historian Howard Chudacoff documents in How Old Are You?: Age Consciousness in American Culture. One-room schoolhouses mixed every age together, children worked alongside adults. That changed late in the century. As age-graded schools and standardized record-keeping spread, Americans grew newly conscious of age and the calendar. It was no surprise then that the birthday became something worth marking and celebrating.

By the first half of the 20th century, the custom of holding birthday parties had taken hold in the US.

According to historian Elizabeth Pleck, early children’s birthday parties were parent-directed social events. They were formal, often included dozens of guests chosen by the parents, and were especially common for girls as a way to teach etiquette and social customs. Americans increasingly saw children less as contributors to the family’s income and more as cherished members of the family, so birthday celebrations became more and more widespread.

Cake itself also became more accessible. For a long time, cake was out of reach for the average person. Sugar was expensive and baking was real labor, so cake was mostly a wealthy household’s treat. But during the Industrial Revolution, sugar got cheaper, milling and baking improved, and the ingredients finally reached ordinary kitchens.

Once sugar became cheaper, it also led to commercial bakeries that made cakes and other items in bulk. Now cakes were mass produced not just for birthdays but for other occasions as well. Thus, by the turn of the 20th century the birthday cake was a fixture of American family life, helped along by commercial bakeries, cheap candles, ready-made icing and, eventually, the boxed mix.

A couple of the other traditions we treat as ancient are surprisingly young. For example, the song “Happy Birthday to You” began in 1893 as a kindergarten greeting song called “Good Morning to All,” written by two Kentucky sisters, Mildred and Patty Hill. The birthday words came later, and the song got linked to the cake as American birthday parties grew more common and widespread. The wish-before-you-blow ritual, meanwhile, likely grew out of older European folk belief that smoke carried your wish up to the heavens.

Today the cake comes in every form imaginable — chocolate, vanilla, red velvet, ice cream, cookie, and shapes from dinosaurs to sports cars. The flavors and looks might be different, but the ritual stays the same. People gather. Candles get lit. Somebody makes a wish. Everybody sings.

And then, somebody cuts the cake.

Letters and press clippings showed how, with speeches and appearances at gatherings for tea or coffee, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy played a crucial role in seeding her son’s presidential campaign in the late 1950s. She talked about his candidacy and his upbringing, and made him more familiar to groups of voters, especially Catholic women.

Those documents, Perry said, showed how some of Kennedy’s political DNA came from a woman “whose voice had often been ignored at best or ridiculed at worst.”

Perry’s discovery offers just one example of material that may change the way visitors to these presidential centers think about our past leaders. But the nature of these sources of information is on the edge of some radical change.

A new presidential center honoring Barack Obama just opened without a research library. The soon-to-be-opened center on Theodore Roosevelt will do the same. And archives for Joe Biden and Donald Trump are currently stored in Maryland, with no plans yet to include them in future presidential centers.

Technology is making it easier to find these archives online, so many documents will still be accessible. But the government created a system of presidential libraries more than 80 years ago to house the papers of former leaders in one convenient place. Their shift away from operating as research sites raises an important question: Why keep building these centers — the latest of which cost hundreds of millions of dollars — if they don’t include a library?

Preserving the record

Through most of US history, presidents were allowed to do what they wished with their documents and other materials once they left office.

Researchers say George Washington organized his with an eye toward posterity. Dolley Madison sold a lot of her husband’s material. Theodore Roosevelt donated much of his archives to Harvard, but his collection wound up being spread out over 18 different institutions.

“They could burn them, they could put them in the Library of Congress, they could take them back to their birthplace,” said Perry, a professor in presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. “There just wasn’t the concept of a federally run… repository for presidential records and documents and archives.”

That changed starting with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The nation’s 32nd president donated his papers and part of his family’s Hyde Park, NY, estate to the federal government for a library and museum. The president’s supporters then raised money for construction, and Roosevelt asked the National Archives to administer the library.

The president dedicated his library on June 30, 1941. He told Americans that making records like his available required the nation to believe in the capacity of its own people to learn from the past so that “they can gain in judgment in creating their own future.”

Following Roosevelt’s example

FDR’s successor, Harry Truman, then decided to donate his papers, and Congress passed the Presidential Libraries Act in 1955 to encourage other presidents to do the same and ensure the documents were made available to Americans. That started a system of presidential centers around the country that were privately built and federally run.

But libraries housing boxes and boxes of records are just one part of these centers. They also include museums highlighting the former leader’s accomplishments.

“A presidential library is kind of two dueling entities, the museum and the archive,” said Justin Vaughn, a political science professor at Coastal Carolina University. “They often are conflated, but they’re really kind of serving two different purposes and funded by two totally different entities.”

The National Archives runs the library part, which is generally located in a separate building on a presidential center campus, sometimes with different entrances and security. Researchers ask to see certain records and make appointments for a visit. They then use a library reading room to examine them.

“Getting access is not like just walking into your neighborhood public library,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political science professor. “You can’t take any of the material with you. It all has to be looked at in the reading room.”

That can involve hours of sifting through boxes of dry memos or correspondence. But the work can offer some unique insights that shape research papers and books on presidential history.

Vaughn found a collection of phone recordings in the archives for Lyndon B. Johnson that show how the former president would flatter, cajole, and bully to get what he needed.

“They aren’t all flattering,” the researcher said about the recordings. “Being on the receiving end of a sales pitch from Lyndon Johnson was like experiencing every single emotion at once.”

While the archives are often most useful to researchers, the museum side targets the general public, often with the goal of polishing a president’s legacy — or repairing it.

Herbert Hoover, for instance, has been criticized historically for his response to the Great Depression, which started during his presidency. But his museum’s Great Depression exhibit notes that Congress refused to enact a Hoover plan to stem financial panic in the early 1930s and then passed a nearly identical strategy once his successor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, took office.

How the system works

Presidents generally start thinking about their museums and libraries as their time in office winds down. They often pick a location or state that helped shape them.

The $850 million Obama Presidential Center, for example, opened on June 18 on the South Side of Chicago, where Obama was a community organizer in the late 1980s and where former first lady Michelle Obama grew up.

Library construction is funded through donations, and the president’s papers are turned over to the National Archives to manage. A federal law mandates that presidential foundations also provide an endowment to help with that expense.

The National Archives currently manages the records of 16 presidents, or every leader dating back to Hoover. That includes the records of 12 former leaders that are stored on the grounds of their presidential center or museum. It also includes the records of Gerald Ford, which are housed at the University of Michigan, and those of the three most recent presidents — Obama, Biden, and Trump — which are stored at the National Archives location in Maryland.

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There are also more than two dozen additional presidential museums or centers scattered around the country, some with libraries or collections that are not managed by the government.

Presidents mostly gave up their records voluntarily until the Watergate scandal, when President Nixon tried to conceal incriminating tapes of Oval Office conversations and phone calls. In response, Congress passed the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act in 1974 to seize Nixon’s records and preserve them within federal custody, ending the precedent that presidential records were private property. Four years later, Congress passed another law, the Presidential Records Act, which required future presidents to turn over their records to the federal government once they left office.

The next generation

The Obama Presidential Center features a 225-foot-tall tower, a museum, walking trails, an NBA-regulation-size basketball court, community meeting areas, and a branch of the Chicago Public Library.

But records from the 44th president’s time in office will be kept at a National Archives location in Maryland and made available digitally.

An Obama Foundation spokesperson said 95% of the former president’s records were already in digital form. And the foundation is funding efforts to create digital copies of any physical papers so they also can be accessed online.

The $450 million Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library opens on July 4, the country’s 250th birthday, in Medora, ND, also emphasizing digital access to records instead of an on-site research library.

Spokesperson Matt Briney said the library has been working with Microsoft to create a chatbot for the museum’s website that will help researchers find digital copies of the president’s records.

The center partnered with Dickinson State University to digitize more than 120,000 items from 18 institutions.

“A high school student in rural Texas now has access to material a Harvard Ph.D. couldn’t have assembled 20 years ago,” Briney said in an email.

What do visitors to these presidential centers lose when the archives are no longer stored on site? Not much, according to researchers. They say the shift to digital archives makes research more convenient for them, although visiting presidential centers can give them a greater sense of the more intangible qualities and interests of their subjects. For example, the Theodore Roosevelt museum sits in the North Dakota badlands, where Roosevelt lived for two years after his wife and mother died in 1884 and visited frequently afterward. The physical experience of being there isn’t something one could replicate in a digital archive.

What the future holds

There are few signs that future presidential centers for Joe Biden and Donald Trump will have on-site research libraries. Biden has chosen Delaware as the site for his, but that project is still in early planning and fundraising stages.

Trump’s supporters are eyeing a Miami location for his center. But the Justice Department issued a memo in early April arguing that the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional and the president doesn’t have to continue complying with it, casting doubt on whether Trump would offer up any archives for public viewing.

The DOJ opinion faced a federal court challenge within days of being published. The American Historical Association and American Oversight, a nonprofit that promotes government transparency, have sued the Trump administration, seeking to make sure that it abides by established federal law and doesn’t destroy records.

“This case is about the preservation of records that document our nation’s history, and whether the American people are able to access and learn from that history,” the plaintiffs state in the opening line of their complaint.

If you remove research libraries from the design of future presidential centers, are visitors left with anything more than an expensive vanity project? Yes, according to researchers and other experts.

These centers can offer chances to learn about US history or leadership for people who can’t visit Washington, DC. That can include learning more about the role first ladies play or hearing from the president himself. Ronald Reagan’s museum offers talks from a hologram of the former president.

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The centers also give visitors — particularly those who didn’t live through the presidency in question — a more complete picture of the president. Perry noted that JFK’s museum teaches about the Cold War and how Kennedy founded the Peace Corps. To younger generations, that makes him more than just the president who was assassinated in Dallas, she noted.

Many centers do charity work or offer places for community meetings, a big emphasis with Obama’s center, noted John Bridgeland, the founder and CEO of More Perfect, an alliance of existing presidential centers.

Bridgeland said he sees these centers as more than research sites — rather, they’re “civic institutions that knit communities together.”

“They’re designed to light a civic spark, to remind each of us, particularly the young people, that they can make a difference in their communities and countries,” Bridgeland said.

In a 6–3 decision along party lines, the Supreme Court ruled today that migrants standing on the Mexican side of the US–Mexico border have not “arrived in the United States” and therefore are not entitled to apply for asylum.

The case, Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, turned on a single question: Does a migrant have to physically cross the border to trigger the right to apply for asylum, or does appearing at a port of entry and requesting admission count as “arriving”? The question arose as a result of a policy called “metering,” which sets a quota for the daily number of asylum seekers processed at US ports of entry. The policy was first used under President Obama in 2016, expanded by Trump in his first term, and rescinded by Biden in 2021.

The asylum seekers argued that Congress enacted the Refugee Act of 1980 to ensure US law complies with international obligations prohibiting countries from returning refugees to places where they face persecution. They contended that those protections extend to migrants who present themselves at US ports of entry seeking asylum. The challengers also argued that the Immigration and Nationality Act requires federal officials to inspect and process such migrants and that the government’s “metering” policy unlawfully blocked access to that process by forcing them to wait in Mexico.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said the language in the Immigration and Nationality Act was unambiguous. “An alien standing in Mexico does not ‘arrive in the United States’ by attempting, and failing, to set foot in this country. An alien ‘arrives in the United States’ only when they cross the border.”

The Court rejected arguments that its interpretation conflicted with a treaty that bars countries from returning refugees to places where they face persecution. Alito wrote that the treaty’s protections apply only to refugees who are already “within the territory” of the US, and so refusing admission to migrants who aren’t yet on US soil doesn’t pose a problem.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, accused the majority of focusing too much on the word “in” and ignoring that Congress created a mandatory inspection and asylum process for migrants who present themselves at ports of entry, which the metering policy doesn’t follow. The dissenters warned that the ruling allows immigration officials to block asylum seekers even when ports have the capacity to process them.

Sotomayor said the decision “blesses the Executive Branch’s decision to slam the door shut on all who are fleeing persecution.”

Haitians’, Syrians’ Legal Right to Stay at Risk

The Supreme Court let the Trump administration end deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians who have been living legally in the US. The protections come from Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a program Congress created in 1990 for migrants from countries hit by war or disaster. Roughly 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians hold the status.

The decision was 6–3 and resolved two combined cases: Trump v. Miot for Haitians and Mullin v. Doe for Syrians.

Last year, the Trump administration sought to end both designations, arguing conditions had improved in both countries and TPS was no longer necessary. In the lower courts, the immigrants had argued that even if the courts cannot second-guess the government’s decision to end their status, they can still review whether the secretary followed the steps the law requires first — and that Kristi Noem, then the secretary of homeland security, skipped one. The government countered that the law doesn’t allow judges to make determinations about things like TPS status.

The Supreme Court agreed with the federal government. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said the TPS law forbids courts to review claims about it. The ban on judicial review “is clear, and its plain meaning is very broad,” he wrote.

The Court also rejected, for now, a separate claim that ending Haiti’s TPS status was driven by race, pointing to President Trump’s past comments about Haitians. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, ate their neighbors’ pets. Trump also said Haitians “probably have AIDS,” and that Haiti is “sh*t hole” country that is “filthy, dirty, disgusting.” Alito wrote that none of the cited statements was “overtly racial” and that all “could rest on race-neutral justifications.”

Justice Elena Kagan dissented, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. She argued the TPS law still allows courts to review where the appropriate procedures were followed.

The Court’s decision lets the terminations take effect while the lawsuits continue. Affected migrants will likely lose work authorization and face removal to countries the State Department still rates “do not travel.”

Hawaii Gun Law Ruling

In a 6–3 ruling, the Supreme Court struck down a Hawaii law that made it illegal for holders of concealed-carry firearm permits to take their guns onto private property open to the public unless the property owner expressly gave permission. It applied to locations such as restaurants, stores, shopping centers, and banks.

The law, passed in 2023, treated violations as a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison. Three residents of Hawaii with concealed-carry permits sued the state, arguing that the law violated their Second Amendment right to bear arms.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion in the case, Wolford v. Lopez. He argued that Hawaii’s law violated the Second Amendment because it left people with concealed carry permits almost nowhere to exercise their constitutionally protected right to carry guns for self defense. While Hawaii argued that the law respected the rights of property owners to decide whether to allow guns on their property, Alito wrote that the state nonetheless “may not adopt property-law rules that violate constitutional rights.””

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissented. She argued that the case was really about property rights, not gun rights, and that private property owners are entitled to require their permission before someone brings a gun onto their property.

In a separate dissent, Justice Elena Kagan argued that Hawaii’s law was consistent with laws from the colonial and founding eras that prohibited bringing guns onto private property without the owner’s consent.

The ruling does not prevent owners of private property from forbidding firearms if they inform the public of the prohibition, which is different from requiring the express permission of private property owners, as Hawaii’s law did. It also does not affect firearms restrictions on public property such as parks and beaches or in sensitive locations including government buildings and schools.

Prairieland Defendants Get 450 Years

Eight people were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 30 to 100 years for their roles in a shooting that wounded a police officer outside an ICE immigration detention facility last year. Their combined sentences total 450 years.

The shooting took place outside the Prairieland Detention Center near Dallas, TX. Authorities said a group gathered outside the detention center on July 4, 2025, setting off fireworks and vandalizing property before the police officer responding to the scene was shot in the neck.

Prosecutors described the incident as an act of domestic terrorism and alleged the defendants were linked to the far-left movement known as antifa, short for antifascists. Defense attorneys denied those allegations. The defendants said they went to the facility to express support for immigrants detained inside.

Benjamin Song, a Marine reservist convicted of attempting to murder a law enforcement officer after opening fire during the demonstration, received the maximum sentence of 100 years. The seven others were sentenced to terms ranging from 30 to 70 years.

Daniel Rolando Sanchez-Estrada received a 30-year sentence after being convicted of concealing documents. His attorney argued that he was not present at the detention center during the shooting and played no role in planning the attack. According to the defense, he merely moved a box — from his residence to a location in Denton, Texas — containing personal belongings, including artwork, poetry, journals, and zines, after the shooting and did not possess any illegal materials.

Several defendants had previously pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists rather than go to trial.

Newsbreak

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Venezuela Earthquakes

At least 188 people were killed after two powerful earthquakes struck Venezuela’s northern coast yesterday. Over 1,500 others were injured, and rescuers continued searching for people believed to be trapped beneath collapsed buildings and rubble.

The main earthquake, measuring magnitude 7.5, was preceded by a magnitude 7.2 foreshock, a smaller earthquake that occurs before a larger seismic event. The Venezuelan government has declared a state of emergency and deployed emergency personnel nationwide.

Several countries, including the United States, have pledged support for rescue and relief efforts.

Camp Mystic Bankruptcy

Camp Mystic, the all-girls Christian summer camp in Texas where 28 people were killed in flooding last year, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

In a filing submitted yesterday in Houston, the camp listed total debt between $10 million and $50 million and assets between $1 million and $10 million. The filing comes as the camp faces multiple lawsuits from victims’ families alleging that camp officials failed to adequately protect campers from the flooding. Chapter 11 allows organizations facing financial problems to reorganize and repay their debts while continuing operations.

Twenty-five campers, two counselors, and one of the camp’s co-owners were killed when floodwaters overwhelmed cabins on July 4, 2025, sweeping some people away and trapping others.

The Eastland family, which owns the camp, had planned to reopen this summer for the camp’s 100th anniversary but abandoned those plans in April after objections from victims’ families and lawmakers.

House Speaker to Push for SAVE America Act

Speaker Mike Johnson said he plans to push for the passage of the SAVE America Act through a third budget reconciliation bill.

Yesterday, President Trump canceled a planned signing ceremony for a bipartisan housing affordability bill, saying he would not sign the measure until the Senate passed the SAVE Act. The reconciliation process allows legislation to pass with a simple majority rather than the 60 votes normally needed to overcome a filibuster. Whether the SAVE Act would qualify for the reconciliation process remains unclear. Senate rules generally limit reconciliation bills to provisions that primarily affect federal spending, revenues, or the debt limit.

The SAVE America Act, would require Americans to show proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections and a photo ID to cast a ballot.

The webpage discusses the threat of these “aliens,” who have been secretly “interacting with us in our daily lives,” “attend[ing] the same classes as our children,” and “liv[ing] seemingly normal human existences.” Yet, according to the page, there is a key difference between these aliens and “real” Americans: “they do not belong here.”

After registering the domain name “Aliens.gov” in March, and then teasing the new page on X in late May, the Trump administration added the webpage to the official whitehouse.gov website. It linked its announcement of the new page to a post on X of an AI-generated image of a UFO beaming up an undocumented immigrant over the southern border wall.

The language of dehumanization

Although it has been referred to as a “parody” and described as “tongue-in-cheek,” “mocking,” and “cheeky,” the webpage is no joke. It’s the latest in a steady stream of online content celebrating the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown with deliberately inflammatory memes that have no apparent purpose other than to denigrate immigrants. The “dangerous speech” rhetoric, the dehumanizing diction, and the fear-mongering design all contribute to the message that these “aliens” are an imminent threat and should all be driven out of the US. The page urges: “Deport them all!” It even includes a “Tip Line” that refers to the “aliens” with the pronoun “it”: “If you’ve witnessed an Alien abduction, do not be alarmed… We will take care of it… and return it safely to its place of origin.”

Following the introductory text, the webpage has a supposedly live ticker of alien “ENCOUNTERS,” beginning at around 3.1 million; a purportedly live “Alien Arrest Map” with red dots that you can click to reveal numbers of arrests, charges, and countries of origin; and, finally, a large red button identified as an “ICE Tip Line,” where readers are encouraged to “REPORT SUSPICIOUS ALIENS.” The Arrest Map links to a list of almost 3,000 pages of alleged “alien” encounters and immigration operations nationwide. By encouraging people to report “suspicious aliens,” the government is soliciting the public’s complicity against the targeted group.

All the data have nebulous and unlisted sources, a familiar hallmark of both President Trump and his administration. According to an analysis of the page’s code done by Wired magazine: “The counter is fake… The figure does not correspond to any enforcement total published by immigration authorities and is roughly seven times larger than the actual ICE arrest count since January 2025.” Wired also reported that, according to the site’s heat map of arrests, ICE has grabbed at least one US-born person in 715 of the listed American cities and towns. In 83 of the locations identified, every single person ICE arrested was a US citizen. And in 3,159 locations, the crime people are accused of is “Immigration.”

The website’s name is based on a dehumanizing double entendre — the word “alien” has a long history in the context of immigration. Tracing back to its Latin root, alius, meaning “other” or “else,” the 14th-century English word “alien” derives from both the Old French alien and the Latin alienus, which meant “belonging to another” and “foreign.” The term “aliens” has existed in American law since the 1700s. The nation’s first immigration law, the Naturalization Act of 1790, stated that “any alien, being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States, for the term of two years,” may become a citizen. The term also figured widely in the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which gave the president power to arrest, imprison, and detain “aliens,” or noncitizens, during wartime. For much early US history, however, the word functioned only as a bureaucratic term.

Shifting terminology

During the Great Depression and immediately following World War II, when jobs were scarce, there was a gradual shift toward use of “alien” to describe Mexican farm laborers on temporary US visas. Waves of deportations of those workers — who were stripped of their papers and deemed “illegal aliens” — ensued and continued through the 1950s, culminating in Operation Wetback in 1954. This focused pushback against labor by immigrants in the country without authorization involved mass deportation of “illegal aliens.”

Operation Wetback comprised many tactics like those we are seeing today, including false claims by the government that the migrant workers brought sickness, crime, and “other socio-economic problems” with them. Government pamphlets dehumanized them as “wetbacks,” “hordes of aliens,” and a “peasant class” that was “infesting areas with disease.”

Border agents snatched the Mexican laborers from private homes, restaurants, and businesses, and gave them no opportunity to contact family or friends to tell them what had happened. Those detained were subjected to inhumane conditions while in custody and shipped as far as possible into Mexico, without any hearings or regard for their actual immigration status. Ultimately, around 300,000 to 800,000 people were deported in a matter of months, and many did not survive the trip.

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Trump Cancels Housing Bill Signing

President Trump abruptly canceled a scheduled signing ceremony for a bipartisan housing affordability bill, saying he would not sign it until the Senate passes the SAVE America Act.

The SAVE America Act, which the House passed in February, would require Americans to show proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections and a photo ID to cast a ballot.

Trump announced the decision in a social media post less than two hours before the planned signing, calling the need to pass the voting bill a “national emergency.” The housing legislation passed the Senate 85–5 and the House 358–32 — veto-proof margins in both chambers. If Trump neither signs nor vetoes it, the bill will become law after 10 days.

Senate Republican leaders, including Majority Leader John Thune, have said they do not have the votes to pass the SAVE America Act — or to change Senate rules to bypass the 60-vote filibuster threshold. Trump has repeatedly urged the chamber to abolish the filibuster to push the bill through.

Judge Blocks Immigration Court Arrests

A federal judge in California blocked nationwide enforcement of the Trump administration’s policy allowing arrests of noncitizens at immigration courthouses. The judge ruled that the government failed to justify abandoning longstanding limits on such arrests.

ICE began making courthouse arrests after Trump returned to office in January 2025, with agents often detaining asylum seekers and other immigrants moments after their hearings ended.

The judge noted that many courthouse arrests involve immigrants who are complying with the law by attending hearings related to their immigration status. He also said the government had failed to explain how these arrests improved public safety when the people detained weren’t considered a threat.

The judge also vacated a related ICE policy allowing immigrants to be held in short-term detention facilities for up to 72 hours, restoring the previous 12-hour limit.

Senate Votes to Limit War Powers

The Senate approved a war powers resolution directing President Trump to withdraw US armed forces from hostilities against Iran, which began without congressional authorization. It is the first time a war powers resolution has cleared both chambers since the act was passed in 1973.

Four Republicans joined Democrats in supporting the measure, which passed 50–48, while Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) was the only Democrat to vote no. Two Republicans did not vote. The House passed the same resolution earlier this month.

The legislation does not go to Trump’s desk because it is a concurrent resolution. Concurrent resolutions do not carry the force of law under current Supreme Court precedent, and do not require a presidential signature.

Trump called the vote “poorly timed and meaningless.” A White House official said the resolution “has no significance” because there are no current hostilities between the US and Iran.

Election Results

Candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani beat two incumbents in yesterday’s Democratic congressional primaries. The sweep is a show of strength for Mamdani’s progressive coalition six months after he became mayor, and a warning sign for establishment Democrats facing left-wing progressive primary challenges nationwide.

Former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander defeated second-term congressman Dan Goldman. Lander has been a much sharper critic of Israel’s war in Gaza than Goldman. State Assembly Member Claire Valdez, another Mamdani ally, was also victorious, and Darializa Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist who helped organize the 2023–24 pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University, defeated five-term incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

In a separate, closely watched Manhattan primary, New York Assembly Member Micah Lasher won the crowded Democratic field to succeed retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler. The race drew national attention and more than $20 million in outside spending. Lasher beat Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of former president John F. Kennedy, who finished a distant third.

DOJ Charges 455 with Health Care Fraud

The Justice Department charged 455 defendants yesterday for their alleged participation in health care fraud and opioid abuse schemes involving over $6.5 billion in false claims submitted to health care programs. Among those charged are 90 doctors and other licensed medical professionals.

The cases span Medicare and Medicaid billing schemes, hospice and wound-care fraud, opioid distribution, and kickback arrangements, with prosecutions in 56 federal districts across 45 states and US territories. The DOJ said it seized more than $182 million in cash, and it termed the alleged fraud the largest ever uncovered: 295 defendants and over $518 million in false claims.

Some of the alleged fraud caused patient harm, including death. A doctor in Florida was charged with billing insurers for medically unnecessary cardiovascular screening of college athletes and then approving the results as normal without personally reviewing them. According to the indictment, the doctor approved one student’s tests as normal even though they showed an enlarged heart, and never alerted the athlete or his family. About three weeks later, the athlete died during basketball practice from complications of the same condition.

Trump Orders DOJ to Probe Oil Companies

President Trump said today that he has instructed the Justice Department to investigate oil companies for not lowering gas prices at the pump in line with falling oil costs. Trump accused the companies of “gouging” customers.

Gasoline prices rose sharply after the war in Iran began in late February and Tehran closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the global oil supply moved before the war. Prices have eased since the US and Iran reached an interim agreement to reopen the waterway.

DOJ Subpoenaed Washington Post, Wall Street Journal Reporters

The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal fought subpoenas issued by the Justice Department to compel the testimony of their reporters before a federal grand jury, the Post reported. Faced with challenges from the newspapers, the government withdrew the subpoenas last month, according to an anonymous government official who provided information to the Post.

One subpoena targeted a Post national security reporter over reporting on US military strikes against boats in Venezuela. The other three went to the Journal reporters for their coverage of how Trump decided to launch the war in Iran. The Post did not say specifically what information the prosecutors were trying to get.

In May, The Wall Street Journal reported that the DOJ had issued subpoenas to its reporters seeking documents related to the coverage of the Iran war.

Both newspapers challenged the subpoenas on First Amendment grounds, saying the government was trying to force journalists to identify confidential sources.

Trump personally pushed acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to issue the subpoenas, CNN reported, after growing angry over leaks tied to the Iran war.

Sen. Mitch McConnell

Sen. Mitch McConnell, who was recently hospitalized, will not return to the Senate this week, his spokesperson said. The Kentucky Republican’s office has not shared details about his illness.

The former Senate GOP leader, 84, was admitted to an undisclosed hospital on June 14. His office has not said whether he remains hospitalized. McConnell was also hospitalized in February for “flu-like” symptoms.

The seven-term senator has missed several votes since during hospitalization, including yesterday’s Iran war powers vote.

— Sharon

Rights are central to the American experience. Demands for collective rights, including the famous call for no taxation without representation, fueled the push for independence and self-government. Soon after, the adoption of the Bill of Rights — the first ten amendments to the Constitution — helped secure that document’s ratification.

Subsequent American history can, in no small part, be viewed as a process of expanding rights as well as access to them. Making the union “more perfect” has meant ending slavery, granting full legal protections and the vote to people of color and women, and expanding rights to cover, among other things, sexual orientation.

This process is not yet complete. There is still a gap to be closed between principle and practice. Opportunity is not yet equal. We have made significant strides, but what Abraham Lincoln referred to at Gettysburg as the “unfinished work” of America remains unfinished.

But even if this were not the case, even if this country’s work were somehow completed and all Americans enjoyed full access to rights, the future of American democracy would not be assured.

For one thing, rights inevitably come into conflict. A woman’s right to choose versus the rights of the unborn. The rights of states versus those of the federal government versus those of individuals. The right of free speech versus the right not to be defamed. Or the right to bear arms, not to wear a mask, and refuse vaccination versus the right of the public to be and feel safe.

There must be a way of sorting through such competing claims. As we are reminded every day, respect for rights does not necessarily translate into a functional government that is willing and able to address the domestic and international challenges facing the country.

What is often missing from the mix are obligations: obligations of one citizen to another, obligations of all citizens to their government and country. More specifically, a commitment to staying open to compromise, remaining civil, and rejecting violence can be prerequisites to bridging inevitable differences over rights and policies meant to protect and promote them.

Just to be clear, obligations are actions citizens should take but cannot be compelled to take. They are moral, social, and political rather than legal.

I have identified ten obligations that are central to the functioning of American democracy. Indeed, these obligations are so essential that we are unlikely to mark another two hundred and fifty years of this democratic experiment unless they are recognized and incorporated into our lives.

1. Be informed. The most basic obligation is for citizens to be informed so they can wisely discharge their most basic responsibility as citizens, namely to vote. Being informed is also the best way to hold accountable those who exercise political authority in a representative democracy such as this one. One of the ironies of this time is that it has never been easier to access information — but it has also never been easier to access misinformation. Teaching people how to navigate the Internet and distinguish facts from opinions — call it information literacy — ought to be a component of civics education. And everyone ought to be encouraged to read at least one quality newspaper that covers both domestic and international developments and separates news coverage from editorials.

2. Get involved. The involvement of citizens in this or any democracy does not end at the ballot box. There are unlimited options for protecting and improving this democracy, from helping people register to vote and working at voting stations to serving on local school boards and protesting unjust or unwise policies. Democracy is not a spectator sport.

3. Learn to compromise. Citizens and those who represent them must be open to compromise. All-or-nothing politics is likely to result in nothing being accomplished. And compromise that brings together rival groups is more likely to endure because more will have a stake in what has been agreed upon. The Constitution itself only came about through multiple compromises, as was the case with legislation advancing civil rights, Social Security, and Medicare.

4. Be civil. We all need to remain civil. Civility makes agreement possible even where there are differences — and preserves the possibility of working together constructively on other issues down the road even if we cannot find common ground on the matter at hand. Abusive language, ad hominem attacks, shouting — these and similar behaviors rarely win people over. Yes, civility is close to good manners and politeness, but it is also smart politics: even when civility doesn’t win over political opponents, it can win over observers unsure of where they stand.

5. Be non-violent. There can be no justification for violence in the pursuit of political goals. It is not just that violence undermines the appeal of one’s cause. It is that violence and democracy cannot coexist. There is no right to be violent. There will be times when citizens are confronted with violence by the state. It may be tempting to respond in kind, but like most temptations it should be resisted. Responsive violence by citizens all but ensures the merits of the issue at hand will be overwhelmed by the dynamics of escalation. It also gives the state room to argue that restoring order must take priority over any other consideration.

6. Respect norms. Norms — the unwritten traditions, rules, customs, conventions, codes of conduct, and practices — should be valued. We should respect them even if we don’t have to. Norms provide a necessary supplement to laws, and make it possible for a political system to succeed despite inevitable differences. The most basic norm in a democracy is to accept election outcomes and embrace the peaceful transfer of power. One can also think of norms that preclude those with access to inside information from trading on it for personal financial gain. Ideally, such norms would be voluntarily observed, but as we know, that is not always the case. The remedy is for voters to reward those who honor important norms and oppose those political figures who do not.

7. Promote the common good. We all benefit from promoting the common good. It is often the right thing to do, but it can also be an act of self-interest. Like it or not, our welfare is unavoidably linked to the welfare of others, to what Martin Luther King Jr. described as being “tied in a single garment of destiny.” Admittedly, there is no universally accepted standard of what constitutes the common good. That is something for politics to sort out. But in modern society, every person’s quality of life — from physical safety to prosperity — is directly affected by the condition and behavior of others. Moral concerns aside, we have a self-interest in making sure opportunity exists for our fellow citizens and that a floor of basic services is provided to and for all.

8. Honor government service. Americans should respect rather than disparage government service. We want the best and brightest to serve because government affects our lives in countless ways, for better and for worse. Why not make it for the better, and help government attract and retain talent? This could involve everything from financial rewards, mid-career training opportunities, and legal protections to extending signs of respect.

9. Support civics education. Everyone should support the teaching of civics. We cannot assume that people will come of age understanding why democracy is better than the alternatives, or knowing what a democracy owes its citizens and what it requires of them. We should teach an understanding of democracy and citizenship in our schools and colleges, and should not allow any young person to graduate without a grounding in civics any more than we would let them graduate without the ability to read or write or do basic math.

10. Put country first. Last but not least, it is essential that every American put country first, before party or person. John F. Kennedy, in Profiles in Courage, told the stories of senators who did the right thing at significant personal cost. More recently we saw Liz Cheney stand up for the rule of law even though it led to her losing her seat in Congress. Many others have spoken truth to power even though it meant losing their jobs. This last obligation can in many ways be understood as the sum total of all the others. We know it when we see it — and ought to reward those in politics who practice it and penalize those who do not.

All of which brings us to the 250^th anniversary of this great experiment we call America. The Founders of our democracy had a good deal to say about rights and little to say about obligations. But that may have been because rights were often ignored at the time of this country’s birth and obligations could be assumed given the collective struggle for rights.

This is no longer the case. Yes, this is a time of celebration, but it should also be one of rededication, to embrace our obligations along with our calls for rights. Democracy is too valuable and fragile to be taken for granted. To be sure, it is demanding of its citizens. The good news is that it rewards them if they preserve and protect it.

Richard Haass is the author of The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens (Penguin, 2023) as well as the weekly Substack newsletter, Home & Away. He is also president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations after having served as CFR’s president for twenty years.

SCOTUS on Green Card Holders

The Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that federal border officers do not need “clear and convincing evidence” that a green card holder committed a crime before stripping them of their status when they try to reenter the country after traveling overseas.

The case, Blanche v. Lau, involves Muk Choi Lau, a Chinese citizen and lawful permanent resident. In 2012, New Jersey charged him with trademark counterfeiting. While those charges were pending, Lau traveled to China and attempted to reenter the US through a New York airport. Rather than admitting him as a returning green card holder, border officials treated him as an applicant for admission and placed him on “parole” — an immigration status that allows a person to enter the country temporarily without being formally admitted. Green card holders usually don’t have to reapply for admission to the US after overseas travel because they are considered “already admitted.”

But after Lau pleaded guilty to counterfeiting charges a year later, the government sought to remove him from the US, deeming him inadmissible because of the conviction. The Second Circuit blocked the effort, ruling that border officers needed clear and convincing evidence — not merely pending criminal charges — that Lau had committed a crime before stripping him of permanent resident status.

Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas disagreed. He said the government does not have to provide clear and convincing evidence at the border, where agents need to make “quick judgments on the spot.” There, the government was free to treat Lau as “seeking admission” rather than already admitted.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented. She argued that both the government and the majority got the sequencing wrong by allowing officials to strip lawful permanent residents of their protected status first and justify the decision later. According to Jackson, the ruling effectively gives the government “a massive blank check” to strip a returning permanent resident of his status and dig up evidence later.

SCOTUS Shuts Door on Human Rights Suits

The Supreme Court has limited the ability of foreign nationals to use US courts to sue over serious violations of human rights that happened in other countries. The 6–3 decision ends a lawsuit that practitioners of Falun Gong, a religious movement that began in China in the 1990s, filed against the California-based tech company Cisco.

The plaintiffs in Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe — Chinese nationals and one US citizen — said China’s government tortured, detained, and in some cases killed Falun Gong members over their religious beliefs. They allege Cisco designed and built the “Golden Shield,” the surveillance system that the Chinese government used to identify and track them. The plaintiffs sued under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), a 1789 law giving federal courts jurisdiction over serious wrongs (“torts”) that violate international law. One plaintiff also sued under the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA).

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said the ATS gives jurisdiction to sue but does not say who may sue for what. Allowing a new kind of lawsuit under it, she wrote, is lawmaking, which belongs to Congress. The case also can’t move forward under the TVPA, as it applies to someone who “subjects” another to torture but does not apply to aiders and abettors, which is what the plaintiffs allege Cisco and its executives were.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the Court still lets three founding-era offenses be sued over: denying safe passage to foreigners, denying the rights of ambassadors, and piracy. She argued there is no reason lawsuits over those three survive but lawsuits over an equally well-established wrong like torture are not allowed. She also argued that aiding and abetting torture is universally prohibited in international law.

SCOTUS on Religious Liberty in Prison

The Supreme Court ruled today that prisoners cannot sue individual state officials for monetary damages under a federal law protecting inmates’ religious exercise. The decision was 6–3 along ideological lines.

The plaintiff in Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections, Damon Landor, is a Rastafarian — an adherent of Rastafari, a religious movement — who did not cut his hair in nearly 20 years as an expression of his beliefs. In 2020, he was transferred to a new prison to serve three weeks of a five-month sentence for illegal drug possession. In two previous prisons, he had been allowed to keep his hair long or under a rastacap. To protect himself, he said, he handed officers in the new prison a copy of a ruling that found that shaving the head of a Rastafarian is a violation of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), a law that protects the religious rights of people in government institutions.

The officers responded by throwing the case in the trash, handcuffing Landor to a chair, and forcibly shaving his head. Landor sued the corrections department and individual officers for damages.

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said that individual correctional officers could not be sued because they did not personally accept the federal funds that came with the requirements to protect religious liberty under RLUIPA –– only the prison system did.

The dissenters said that Congress wanted people to be able to sue both individuals and the institution they work for, and that prison officers were acting as agents of the state in this instance. The justices in dissent claim that without being able to hold individual officers accountable, people like Landor will be left with no remedy for the ways in which they were harmed.

Newsbreak

Which president holds the record for the most vetoes? Which president had the largest shoe size? Who was the only president to serve in both World War I and World War II? Who was the tallest president? These questions and many, many more are answered in The Smithsonian Book of Presidential Trivia, which has been fully updated as of 2026 to include questions and answers about every US president to date.

Judge Quashes Subpoenas Against MN Officials

A federal judge yesterday quashed six Justice Department grand jury subpoenas issued to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and other Democratic officials, ruling they were meant to retaliate against the state for refusing to help the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

The Justice Department said the subpoenas were tied to an investigation into whether the officials obstructed federal immigration enforcement during Operation Metro Surge, a December 2025 immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities that drew mass protests and the fatal shootings of two US citizens by federal agents. But the subpoenas, served in January, came days after Minnesota’s attorney general and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul sued to block the operation — a timing that Chief US District Judge Patrick Schiltz cited as evidence the subpoenas were retaliatory.

The subpoenas, he wrote, were “not issued to investigate, but to harass, coerce, and retaliate.”

The subpoenas sought records from Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, and Hennepin and Ramsey county officials.

Pentagon Seeks $80 Billion More

The Pentagon has told senators it needs an additional $80 billion to cover the costs of the US war against Iran and other unexpected expenses.

According to senators briefed on the request, Defense Department officials warned that the military could run short of funding for operations later this summer unless Congress approves a supplemental wartime spending bill. Without additional money, the Pentagon may have to cut training exercises and other priorities because of the costs of the Iran conflict and troop deployments along the US southern border.

The White House Office of Management and Budget, which needs to approve any such supplemental funding request, has not yet made a formal request to Congress. The Pentagon’s budget for fiscal year 2026 is about $1 trillion.

Senate Passes Housing Bill

The Senate passed a bipartisan housing bill yesterday aimed at lowering housing costs by limiting large corporate investors’ ability to buy up single-family homes. The measure passed 85–5 and now heads to the House.

The bill would prohibit institutional investors from owning more than 350 single-family homes. According to government figures for six metropolitan cities across the country, institutional ownership of single-family homes has increased and accounts for between 1% and 3% of the housing stock.

The bill would also expand federal grant programs to help cities build more housing and provide new funding for communities to convert abandoned buildings and infrastructure into homes.

The legislation is the result of nearly a year of bipartisan negotiations to address the nation’s housing shortage and improve affordability. Realtor.com estimates the housing shortage has grown to more than 4 million homes nationwide after years of underbuilding. The shortage has pushed prices higher, with the income needed to buy a typical starter home now estimated at about $86,000 a year.

Iran Nuclear Inspections

President Trump said today that Iran had “fully and completely” agreed to allow international inspectors to resume monitoring its nuclear program, but Tehran denied the claim.

Last week, the United States and Iran signed a framework peace agreement ending the war and establishing a 60-day period to negotiate broader disputes, including the future of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

Iran said there were “no plans” for inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to return to uranium enrichment sites. Those facilities were bombed during the opening days of the joint US–Israeli military campaign that began on February 28.

For an agency that once spent considerable energy planning for a post-carbon future, it was a striking pivot. And it wasn’t just vibes. On June 4, Trump stood in the Oval Office and committed $700 million in federal investment to keep aging coal plants running, fund two new ones (the first to be built in the United States since 2013), restart a shuttered plant in Maryland, and back a long-delayed coal export terminal in Oakland, CA. He invoked the Defense Production Act, a Cold War–era national security law, to do it.

Coal had been in decline for two decades — not because of regulation alone, but because the market moved on. So what changed?

The short answer is electricity. The longer answer is more complicated.

The administration says it’s solving an electricity shortage — but it’s doing so by propping up the most expensive, most polluting fuel in the American energy mix, one the market has been abandoning for two decades. That’s not necessarily a contradiction; the fastest tool isn’t always the best one. But it’s worth considering what’s actually being traded away to get there

An old fuel for a new problem

For years, the central question in American energy debates was how quickly the country could move away from fossil fuels. The Trump administration has replaced that question with a different one: How quickly can America generate enough electricity to stay competitive with China in artificial intelligence?

The rapid expansion of AI has dramatically altered the math. Data centers consume enormous amounts of power — some as much as a small city. Industry forecasts suggest electricity demand from data centers alone could more than double by the end of the decade. That surge is hitting an electrical grid already under strain, and it’s arriving faster than the infrastructure to meet it.

That’s where coal comes in — not as an energy triumph, but as an energy stopgap. Existing coal plants are already connected to the grid and the fuel can be stockpiled on site. Unlike nuclear plants, new transmission lines, or utility-scale renewables, they don’t require years of permitting and construction.

As Energy Secretary Chris Wright has put it, “energy is the enabler of everything that we do,” and coal, whatever its problems, is available right now.

Invoking the Defense Production Act makes the administration’s logic explicit. That law was designed for national security emergencies — it’s been used to accelerate the production of military equipment, pandemic medical supplies, and semiconductors. Using it for coal signals that the White House views electricity generation not as an economic or environmental question, but as a matter of strategic competition. Every AI model requires computing power. Every data center requires electricity. In that framework, the grid itself becomes a geopolitical asset.

There’s something to that argument. The energy demand is real, and so is the strain on the grid. Meanwhile the alternative energy sources the administration’s critics prefer — offshore wind, nuclear, large-scale solar with storage — face timelines measured in years. Transmission lines alone can take a decade to permit and build. New nuclear projects have routinely run over schedule and over budget. Large-scale renewable developments face delays of years before they can connect to the power grid. If electricity shortfalls slow AI development or manufacturing expansion, the harm would be significant. So the administration is not wrong that something must bridge the gap.

The market decided

But here’s the problem with the bridge argument: coal didn’t decline because Washington turned against it. It declined because the market did.

Coal generated roughly half of US electricity in 2005. By 2025 that fell to about 10% — not primarily because of environmental activists or Obama-era regulations, but because natural gas got cheaper, renewable energy costs dropped dramatically, and utilities made straightforward economic decisions.

Many of the plants now receiving federal support were already scheduled for retirement for the same reason. The Maryland plant being restarted was described by its own owner as “not just uneconomic but extraordinarily uneconomic” when it closed in 2024.

The AI demand surge is real, but it’s not improving the economics. Coal plants nationally have run under 50% capacity for years, and data center demand is now pushing utilities to squeeze more output from them. But new plants have not gotten more economical to build, and the handful of ones the administration is funding are the exception, not the trend. Most forecasts still expect natural gas to absorb the largest share of new data center demand through 2030, with coal picking up a smaller slice mainly because it’s already sitting there.

Federal subsidies can extend that sliver of opportunism. They can’t make coal cost-competitive on its own. Tech companies have been moving aggressively to sign long-term renewable energy contracts, invest in next-generation nuclear, and fund their own clean power infrastructure. They want cheap, reliable electricity, and they’re not particularly attached to what generates it. The AI sector, in other words, is not waiting for Washington to solve this problem indefinitely — it’s hedging, and coal isn’t where most of that hedge is being placed.

The environmental case against this bet is even more straightforward. Coal is the most carbon-intensive fuel in the American energy mix — it produces more carbon dioxide than natural gas does, and significantly more pollution than renewables.

Throughout its lifecycle, experts say, coal pollutes air, water, and soil in surrounding communities, contributing to cardiovascular disease, asthma, and premature deaths. Children and older adults are most at risk. “If you’re going to pick between living next to any sort of power plant,” said Mary Willis, a professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health, “coal should be at the bottom of your list.”

Extending the lives of aging plants — some by decades, under the administration’s projections — means those health and climate costs extend with them.

What to watch

Whether this strategy holds together depends less on political messaging than on a few practical variables that remain genuinely open.

The first is demand. If AI-driven electricity consumption grows as fast as the most aggressive projections suggest, pressure to maintain older power capacity will intensify. If growth is slower, or if tech companies build out their own clean energy supply chains faster than expected, the economic case for coal subsidies weakens considerably.

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The second variable is legal resistance. Environmental groups have already criticized the administration’s plans and are likely to challenge major projects in court. The Oakland export terminal was tied up in litigation for nearly a decade.

The third is political staying power. Coal’s appeal for this administration is not purely practical — it’s cultural. When Trump talks about coal, he’s rarely just talking about electricity. He’s talking about work, identity, and industrial revival in communities that have been waiting for that revival for the better part of a decade — towns where the mine or the plant was the economic center of gravity, and where the sense of abandonment runs deep.

At a February White House event called “Champion of Coal,” which was framed around supporting workers and creating jobs in rural communities, Trump was flanked by miners and credited with “ending the Radical Left’s war on the industry.” The language was nearly identical to statements from his first term. In 2017 — also flanked by coal miners, who described “efforts to shut down their mines, their communities, and their very way of life,” according to a White House press release — he said his administration was “putting an end to the war on coal.”

The Department of Energy isn’t posting spreadsheets about grid reliability. It’s posting memes. The audience isn’t utility executives. It’s voters. That dynamic won’t shift with the economics — which means coal’s political life appears to be outlasting its commercial one.

The most honest read of this moment is both/and, not either/or. The electricity problem the administration is trying to solve is real — AI-driven demand is straining a grid that wasn’t built for it, and faster clean energy deployment faces genuine obstacles. But coal is a costly, polluting, economically fragile answer to that problem. The administration is reaching for the nearest available tool while betting that demand grows fast enough to justify it and that legal and market headwinds don’t overtake the subsidy.

The bet pays off only if the bridge leads somewhere. Right now, no one in Washington is building the other side.

Judge Blocks Voter Roll Database

A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from creating a centralized database containing Americans’ private information.

In an order issued this afternoon, US District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan said federal officials fed the database with unreliable data on millions of Americans, leading states that partnered with the federal government to “actively remov[e] United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information.”

The database was created after President Trump signed an executive order in March last year directing multiple federal agencies to implement a proof-of-citizenship requirement for voter registration. The League of Women Voters and several other voting rights groups sued, arguing that the administration was unlawfully using the database to search for citizenship-related information.

Sooknanan said that “the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote.” She added: “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”

Trump–Italy Spat

The US–Italian relationship has soured over President Trump’s claim that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni “begged” him for a photo at last week’s G7 summit. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani canceled his planned weekend trip to the US, calling Trump’s claims “serious and offensive” toward Meloni and all of Italy.

Meloni said Trump’s assertion was “completely fabricated.”

Trump first made the claim in an interview with Italian media, then repeated it on Truth Social over the weekend, writing that Meloni’s popularity was slipping because Italy declined to help the US in the Iran war. Meloni answered on social media: “My popularity is none of your concern. I suggest you focus on yours.”

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani was scheduled to meet Secretary of State Marco Rubio on his US trip, before he canceled.

DOJ on “Weaponization” Fund

The Justice Department is refusing a federal judge’s request to swear under oath that its proposed $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” is dead.

The fund would have paid people who claimed to be victims of government “weaponization” under past administrations — a plan critics in both parties said was created to help Trump’s allies.

After that criticism, the Trump administration said they would drop the fund, but US District Judge Leonie Brinkema said she wanted it in writing.

In a court filing Friday, the Justice Department called the sworn declarations unnecessary and said the judge’s order raises “serious separation of powers concerns, because it improperly compels testimony from senior officials from the executive branch.”

When the judge extended block on the fund on June 12, she told the DOJ lawyers that the lawsuit against the fund would move forward.

British PM Announces Resignation

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said today that he is stepping down as prime minister.

Starmer took office in 2024, but he has faced mounting pressure since his party’s heavy losses in May’s local elections.

Starmer lost popularity over cost-of-living concerns and the rise in energy prices due to the war in Iran. Starmer had promised to bring down energy prices.

The prime minister said he will stay on until a successor is chosen, with nominations opening July 9. He is the sixth British prime minister to step down in the last 10 years.

Newsbreak

Inspired by a real-life 1923 shipwreck off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Runner is a historical novel that explores the lengths to which one young woman will go to keep her family afloat when her father’s rumrunning ship mysteriously sinks. Written by award-winning author (and The Preamble’s executive editor!) Ashton Lattimore, it’s a Prohibition-era story following Lena Jameson as she takes over her father’s business, embarking on a journey from the quaint, colorful streets of Oak Bluffs through gangland Boston to the jazz-filled clubs of Harlem during its Renaissance, all in search of quick money — and the truth about the shipwreck. But as buried secrets rise to the surface and the temptations of the glittering underworld pull Lena in deeper, everything she’s fought to protect soon hangs in the balance: her heart, her family, and her place in a world that’s quick to condemn women who dare to want more. We’d love it if you pre-ordered a copy!

Reflecting Pool

The Trump administration is blaming “vandals” for the problems with the reflecting pool project and said over the weekend that several people had been arrested and would be prosecuted.

Three-time Olympian David Hearn was arrested by US Park Police on Friday. He has denied wrongdoing, saying he only reached into the pool to touch a loose piece of coating before officers handcuffed him. He faces a misdemeanor charge of destruction of government property and is due in DC Superior Court on July 9. The misdemeanor is punishable by a fine of up to $100,000, one year in prison, or both.

The renovation has been a Trump pet project ahead of the nation’s July 4 semiquincentennial, and he personally chose the “American flag blue” color for the pool floor.

Days after water was pumped back in, algae surfaced and the new blue coating began peeling. National Park Service crews have been treating the water with hydrogen peroxide to kill the algae, which likely caused new blue paint to peel off.

Trump publicly said the work would cost about $1.8 million, but the price has since increased to over $14 million. Trump said Sunday that repairs to the pool will be started “immediately.”

Acting DNI Director

The new acting director of national intelligence (DNI), Bill Pulte, has requested a list of all employees at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to determine whom he can fire.

A Politico report said he plans to cut about 300 staff from the National Counterterrorism Center, which integrates terrorism-related intelligence across the government. Pulte took over as DNI after Tulsi Gabbard left the role last week.

Pulte, a Trump ally with no intelligence background, remains the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). He sought the employee list even before officially starting as acting DNI Friday.

He also asked whether he could take home the President’s Daily Brief — a highly classified intelligence summary for top officials.

Democrats have warned Pulte against making large-scale cuts or declassifying intelligence in ways that could expose sensitive sources and methods. They have also accused him of using his position as head of the FHFA to pursue criminal referrals against Trump’s political opponents.

Jeff Clements, CEO of American Promise, believes there’s a solution: a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. I spoke with Jeff to better understand why money has become so dominant in our politics, and why reform efforts keep running into roadblocks.

We discussed:

• how the Supreme Court has shaped the modern campaign finance system;

• why foreign governments can spend millions to influence state ballot initiatives but can’t legally give to candidates;

• how the huge cost of campaigns may be producing worse candidates;

• the surprising reason a constitutional amendment might be more achievable than you think;

• what Hawaii is trying as a test case for limiting corporate political spending;

• why fixing money in politics might only require convincing 360 people;

… and more.

Press play to listen.

We talk about change like it’s a threat. Don’t let the job change you, don’t lose yourself in the relationship, stay true to who you are. Underneath all of it is a belief that people come with a fixed, essential nature, a “real you” that any drift betrays. You hear it in every wedding toast and every parent describing their kid: “I knew the day she was born that she would grow up to be a leader because of how ferocious her cries were.”

We talk about character like it was issued at birth and never revised. Of course, some of this is true. We are all wired a little bit differently. Temperament is a real thing, and so is neurodiversity. But life will influence and change us all whether we like it or not. The person you were ten years ago wanted different things, feared different things, would be baffled by half of what your life looks like now.

Since my daughter was born, I have barely been on vacation. When I have, I’ve spent most of it flat on a lounge chair. The woman I used to be hovers over me like the Ghost of Christmas Past, covering her eyes in disbelief. What happened to your sense of adventure? You swore you’d never let a kid slow you down. She had a clear picture of who I’d turn out to be, and she is watching me fail to be that person in real time.

But here’s what we forget — she’s not a reliable witness. She has never lived a single day of the life she’s judging. She doesn’t understand what a year of chronic overstimulation and sleep deprivation feels like or how the mental load of motherhood zaps any interest in planning an elaborate vacation, let alone an adventure.

And even more interestingly, at every age of our lives, we seem to believe that we are fully evolved and done changing. Psychologists call this phenomenon the end-of-history illusion. Researchers asked thousands of people, young and old, how much they’d changed in the past ten years and how much they expected to change in the next. Everyone reported a lot of change behind them and almost none ahead. Of course, almost everyone was wrong. Your previous version of yourself judges you by standards set a long time ago.

So the next time that older version of you shows up to judge, don’t argue about whether you’ve changed. You have. Remind them what they’re missing. Tell them about the job that swallowed you whole, the diagnosis that changed your body, the current political environment, or whatever reorganized your life. It’s not fair to judge yourself by a standard that is no longer relevant or a life that no longer exists.

But sometimes you hand over everything and a clear-eyed part of you still feels disappointed. How you got here makes sense, but you don’t like the direction it’s headed… or you feel as though you aren’t living in alignment with your values. This is worth listening to. It usually means you’ve drifted from something important. Maybe you’ve lost touch with important people in your life or fallen into bad habits and aren’t taking care of yourself.

The version of you reading this article won’t be your final form. In ten years you’ll look back and marvel at how finished you thought you were. But there’s always an opportunity to change your life. This doesn’t mean you have to get back to “who you were”, but you can always choose which way to walk from here.

We’re back with this week’s community open thread. In a busy and noisy world, this is your place to slow down, connect with others in The Preamble’s community, and share what’s on your mind. Join the conversation down in the comment section below.

This community is for paid subscribers, and we’d love to have you join us! The goal is to create a safe and welcoming environment for everyone, which means speaking to and treating each other with respect in the comments.

Thanks for being part of our community!

— The Preamble Editorial Team

The version most people picture — single women lined up, the bride pivoting away, the bouquet sailing backward over her shoulder — is a relatively recent version of the tradition, with somewhat murky origins.

Let’s start with the bouquets themselves. Carrying flowers at weddings likely goes all the way back to antiquity. In Roman weddings around 100 CE, the bride carried a bouquet of wheat, and the groom tossed nuts to male onlookers as the couple walked to their new home. Stalks of grain, herbs, and, later, flowers were all used in wedding ceremonies to symbolize the bride’s fertility.

The flowers-and-beauty version came later and took off in early 19th century England. Queen Victoria carried orange blossom and myrtle at her 1840 wedding to Prince Albert, and royal brides have included myrtle from that same plant in their bouquets ever since. As American weddings grew more formal and elaborate during the 19th century, so did bridal bouquets.

That explains where brides got the flowers, but not why they started throwing them. Since the 19th century, and maybe even earlier, people have been throwing something at weddings. An 1872 study on brides and wedding traditions mentioned throwing rice at weddings as a then-new custom.

Bouquet-tossing itself, though, wasn’t limited to weddings. Across the 19th century, throwing flowers was a familiar way to honor someone in public.

A typical scene played out in January 1850 at the Orleans Theater in New Orleans, where Verdi’s opera Jerusalem was making its city debut. According to The New Orleans Crescent, a Madame Devries “sang unusually well, and was, at the close of the first act, called forward and showered with bouquets” — a compliment the newspaper gushed about with pride.

That kind of scene was routine across the country. Theater audiences were hardly alone. Newspapers also described bouquets being thrown at military celebrations, political rallies, Mardi Gras parades, and other public festivities. During the Grand Review of the Armies in May 1865 — the victory parade in Washington after the Confederate surrender — The New York Times reported that “enthusiastic friends have showered bouquets and wreaths of laurel upon officers, men and horses.”

Whether the wedding bouquet toss grew out of this broader culture of floral tributes or developed independently is not clear. But these newspaper accounts make it clear that throwing of bouquets was not confined to weddings.

Tossing a bouquet at weddings has been a custom in the US since at least the 1930s, though the mechanics looked different then. A bride wrote to a newspaper columnist about when to throw her bouquet at her home wedding — “immediately after the ceremony, or just before leaving the house?” The columnist advised her to toss the flowers among the guests after she changed into her “going away” costume.

Other 1930s accounts describe brides tossing the bouquet specifically to members of the wedding party. At the 1937 wedding of Ethel du Pont and Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., the bride, who stood at a second story gallery with the groom, tossed her bouquet of roses, sweet peas, and lilies to “the eager girls below.”

In the decades afterward, the tradition evolved. Photos from the 1950s show brides facing the female guests and tossing the bouquet forward to them. The backward toss may have become standard later just because it photographs better, according to wedding scholars Cele Otnes and Elizabeth Pleck.

And the over-the-shoulder toss may be distinctly American. The 1989 book A Dictionary of Superstitions, referring to an English wedding etiquette guide, notes that as late as 1963, the backward toss was “a rather charming American tradition that is not very widely adopted here [the UK] as yet.”

Despite the hazy origins of the bouquet toss, the tradition has taken on a life of its own, no doubt helped along by Hollywood.

Films and television from the 1950s onward used the bouquet toss as a symbol of romantic possibility: who’s next? If you watched enough American sitcoms in the 1980s and 1990s, you definitely saw an episode where someone caught the bouquet who absolutely did not want to, usually with horrified or embarrassed facial expressions all around.

But here’s where the tradition stands today: it’s quietly fading.

According to wedding planning platform The Knot’s 2026 survey of thousands of recently married couples, only 24% had a bouquet toss at their reception.

One reason the tradition may be fading is an increased sensitivity to guests and their different life experiences. Movies and TV shows often feature a bevy of young unmarried women eager to lunge at the bouquet; in real life, one has to be conscious of divorced friends and relatives, widows, or women who do not want their relationship status advertised.

Still, though trends are moving away from the bouquet toss, the tradition survives because for those few moments, the toss commands near-total attention. There’s the laughter, the excitement, the anticipation, and perhaps the disappointment of whoever missed grabbing hold of the flying bouquet. But, above all, it’s fun.

Yes, that Spencer Pratt.

The former reality TV star from The Hills had become an unlikely conservative vessel for frustration with Los Angeles politics, homelessness, wildfire recovery, crime, housing costs, and the broader sense that City Hall has been running a choose-your-own-dysfunction adventure. On election night, Pratt was in second place behind incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, with progressive city council member Nithya Raman trailing in third. That second-place spot mattered because the top two candidates would advance to the November runoff, regardless of party.

Then California kept counting.

As more mail ballots were processed, Raman gained ground, eventually passing Pratt. Then her lead widened to nearly 22,000 votes. By the time the Associated Press called the race days after polls closed, Raman had officially advanced to the runoff against Bass, and Pratt was out.

This is where a normal elections-analysis story would look at the LA mayoral race and break down what it means and what signals we can glean from the results, including voter anger in a heavily Democratic city.

But this is 2026, so the story became something else entirely.

President Trump claimed the election was rigged. Conservative commentators pointed to the slow count as suspicious. Supporters treated the change in the vote totals as evidence that something nefarious was afoot. House Speaker Mike Johnson questioned California’s process too, saying the results “stink to high heaven and everybody knows that.” When asked for evidence, he said that “some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream that it’s impossible to prove.”

That is a remarkable and impossible standard. If a claim is impossible to prove, it is usually a clue that we should be more careful before repeating it. In modern election conspiracy politics, though, the lack of evidence often becomes part of the plot. The fraud is so hidden, so sophisticated, so upstream, that not being able to prove it somehow makes it feel more true.

Very convenient. Also very dangerous.

The LA mayoral election is emblematic because it shows how quickly routine election administration can be converted into a national conspiracy theory. Slow counting becomes “They’re finding votes.” Mail ballots become “mysterious dumps.” A candidate’s shrinking lead becomes “proof” that someone is stealing the race.

The problem is that, in many states, especially states with heavy mail voting, that is just how counting works.

California is slow on purpose

California counts slowly because state law gives voters time to return ballots, gives counties time to verify them, and gives voters time to fix certain problems with their ballots. That system has trade-offs. It makes the count slower. It also makes it harder to throw out eligible voters’ ballots because of ordinary human mistakes.

California mails ballots to active registered voters, and voters can return them by mail, drop box, voting site, or county elections office. The California secretary of state says mailed ballots must be postmarked by Election Day and received by the county elections office no later than seven days after Election Day. If a voter forgets to sign a ballot envelope, or if the signature does not match to the signature on file, election officials notify the voter and provide a process to fix the issue before certification.

This process means the first election-night numbers are not even close to the final tallies.

In Los Angeles, the first results included mail ballots returned early and processed before Election Day, plus votes cast that day. After that, the county kept processing ballots that arrived later, typically in the same order in which they were received.

There is nothing inherently suspicious about that. Annoying? Sure. Slow? Absolutely. But suspicious or corrupt? Only if you start from the assumption that every vote counted after your preferred candidate’s best moment may be fake.

What’s more, the shift in Los Angeles was also politically predictable. Data from the mayoral election showed that the ballots turned in last were disproportionately from Democrats, so Pratt (and others) shouldn’t have been caught off guard when they saw vote totals for Bass and Raman get big jumps as those later ballots were counted.

But that nuance — the attention to details of when, how fast, and in what order, all over the county — too often takes a back seat to the ease of claiming fraud. And that’s a problem.

Read more

SCOTUS Narrows Gun Ban

The Supreme Court unanimously concluded that a federal law that bars illegal drug users from owning firearms does not automatically apply to users of marijuana.

In 2022, federal agents searched Ali Hemani’s home near Dallas, TX, and found a pistol, marijuana, and cocaine. The FBI was investigating Hemani for his travel to Iran and his brother’s attendance at an Iranian university.

After Hemani told the agents he used marijuana about every other day, Hemani was ultimately charged only under a federal law that makes it a crime for anyone who is “an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” to possess a gun, with a potential sentence of up to 15 years in prison. Hemani argued that his conviction under the law violated his Second Amendment rights.

While using marijuana was not something the Founders wrote about when considering gun restrictions, the government argued that historic precedent allowed people who were considered “habitual drunkards” to be disarmed, even at the Founding.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the Court, rejected the government’s claim, saying that they did not actually establish how much marijuana Hemani used, how potent it was, or what effect it had on him. Gorsuch wondered if Hemani was a “risk to himself or his family,” or if he “used a mild gummy as a sleep aid a few times a week.” According to Gorsuch, the government claimed it didn’t matter. They also failed to establish whether Hemani was violent, an addict, a danger to himself or others, or unable to manage his own affairs –– potential criteria they might use when determining whether someone is a habitual drunkard and can thus have their gun rights restricted.

The Court’s decision does not strike down the underlying law — Gorsuch said the ruling is “a narrow one” that does not address disarming addicts, habitual drunkards, people who are intoxicated, or those shown to be individually dangerous.

Iran Peace Deal

President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed a framework agreement yesterday, extending the ceasefire for 60 days and reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

The deal calls for the immediate end of fighting on all fronts. Iran agreed to allow commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, toll free, for 60 days. After that, Iran will work with Oman to determine the “future administration and maritime services,” leaving the door open for Iran to charge tolls in the future.

The deal called for lifting the US blockade of Iranian ports — which Vice President JD Vance said today has already happened — and for the US to waive sanctions on Iranian oil. Iran reiterated that it would never build a nuclear weapon, a position it has long held. The deal does not address Iran’s ballistic missile program. Yesterday, Trump told reporters that he did not object in principle to Iran possessing ballistic missiles if other countries have them, saying it would be “a little bit unfair” to deny Iran capabilities that others possess.

GOP Slams US–Iran Deal

Several Senate Republicans are criticizing the Iran agreement, arguing it gives Tehran too much while failing to constrain its nuclear program or missile capabilities. Much of the criticism also focused on a provision in the 14-point framework calling for a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) wrote, “Reagan is rolling over in his grave” and called the deal “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.” Cassidy argued the agreement leaves Iran’s nuclear ambitions intact, rewards it with sanctions relief and reconstruction funding, and signals that threatening the Strait of Hormuz produces concessions. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said the president is “receiving some very poor advice on this deal.”

The Trump administration has defended the deal, with Vance saying Iran cannot receive sanctions relief or access frozen assets until it meets its commitments. Vance has said US taxpayers will not pay into the fund, and that investment is expected to come from governments and private investors in the Gulf.

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If your dad is a nature lover, grab him a copy of The Backyard Bird Chronicles for Father’s Day this weekend. Written by Amy Tan, the book maps the passage of time through daily entries, thoughtful questions, and beautiful original sketches of the birds Tan found visiting her yard. Inspired to look to the natural world in 2016 — in a moment when, as now, the country felt particularly divided and social media especially toxic — the author discovered birdwatching as an opportunity to savor quiet moments during a volatile time, connect to nature in a meaningful way, and imagine the intricate lives of the birds she admired.

US Troops in Europe

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth today lashed out at NATO allies that refused to allow US forces to access their bases because of the war in Iran. Hegseth called their actions “shameful” and announced a six-month Pentagon review of American troop levels in Europe as the US pushes NATO allies to take primary responsibility for the continent’s defense.

The review, Hegseth said, will determine “how fast and irreversibly” Europe takes the lead on its own defense. He also warned that the US could withhold some NATO contributions from “free riding” allies that fail to meet defense spending targets.

The review follows a June 3 US announcement that, in any future crisis, the US will not commit an aircraft carrier and support ships, aerial refueling planes, and dozens of fighter jets to the alliance.

Obama Center Opening

Former presidents and first ladies joined Barack andMichelle Obama in Chicago today for the dedication of the new Obama Presidential Center.

President Trump, who called the project a “total disaster” on social media in February, was not invited.

The $850 million, privately funded, 19-acre campus in Chicago includes a museum chronicling Obama’s presidency, a branch of the Chicago Public Library, gardens, an athletic center, and basketball courts. The ceremony featured performances by Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Jennifer Hudson, Christina Aguilera, John Legend, Bono, and others.

The campus opens to the public tomorrow on Juneteenth.

Trump Settles Lawsuit

President Donald Trump has settled his lawsuit against his niece, Mary Trump, over her role in providing confidential family financial records to The New York Times. The Times won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for its report about those financial records.

Trump sued his niece in 2021, alleging she violated a confidentiality agreement from a 2001 settlement over the estate of his father, Fred Trump Sr., by sharing tax and financial documents with reporters. Mary Trump, a psychologist, identified herself as a Times source in her 2020 memoir, Too Much and Never Enough. The president had sought $100 million in damages.

Both sides told a New York state court earlier this week that they would seek dismissal with prejudice, preventing Trump from filing a suit again in the future. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

A judge dismissed Trump’s related claims against the Times and its three reporters in 2023 and ordered him to pay nearly $400,000 in legal fees.

While Trump’s approval numbers overall have tanked to the lowest since he took office, the drop in Latino support is notable given the hoopla about how successfully he’d made inroads into Latino communities, who were once seen as Democratic Party strongholds.

Between rallies in the deep-blue Bronx and shoutouts to reggaeton artists like rapper Nicky Jam (whom Trump famously misidentified as a “hot” woman on stage), Trump’s claim that “Hispanics love Trump” may be tested come November 2026. (Note, while the terms “Latino” and “Hispanic” are often used interchangeably, the term “Latino” encompasses a larger swath of voters with ties to parts of Latin America and the Caribbean that were not historically connected to Spain.)

What caused the drop in support?

In 2016 during his first run for president, Trump had the support of just 28% of Latino voters. That number jumped up to 36% in 2020, even though Trump lost the general election. In 2024, the number of Latino Trump voters reached 48%, representing one piece of a racially and ethnically diverse coalition that handed him a second term.

Latino voters who are now turning away from Trump explain the shift by pointing to the economy and unaffordable living costs, combined with harsh immigration policies and the Iran war. Leaders like Guesnerth Josué Perea of the Afro-Latin@ Forum have witnessed up close and personal the reality of Trump’s promises not matching the dream he sold to communities.

“A church that I know very well, their voters were majority for Trump,” Perea tells The Preamble. “Then their church immediately after the inauguration had to create emergency response protocols for people being deported and wrongfully detained in the streets right outside near the church.”

Perea says many Trump-supporting Latino voters believed Trump’s immigration policies would target undocumented immigrants who had criminal records or who broke laws. They weren’t prepared for their own family members — whom they knew as upstanding members of the community, and some of whom arrived in the United States as babies — to be sent back to countries they barely knew.

“Now it’s like, ‘No, that’s affecting my friends, and now I have to change my mind,’” Perea says.

According to recent estimates, ICE deported more than 540,000 immigrants in 2025 alone. Latinos accounted for 9 in 10 arrests made by ICE. Critics say the pressure to hit deportation quotas has led immigration enforcement to a “by any means necessary” approach, which has included rounding up community members, elders, and children everywhere from the halls of immigration hearings to graduations.

Dr. Carlos Vargas-Ramos, director of public policy, external relations, and development at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College CUNY, says it’s important to understand how Latino communities have historically been positioned economically to understand why Trump’s immigration crackdown policies could have been appealing in both 2016 and 2024.

“Many Latino voters reacted to the seemingly unchecked border crossings that they saw as threatening their economic livelihood because that is the population that they would have to compete with in the labor market,” Vargas-Ramos tells The Preamble. “It doesn’t mean that there are no professionals among the Latino population or highly skilled workers among the Latino population. There are, but we tend to be overrepresented in both lower-skilled jobs and semi-skilled jobs.”

Even Latino voters who have been unaffected by Trump’s immigration policies are still feeling other impacts of his administration — it’s hard to ignore that it’s harder to fill up their gas tanks, buy food, or run businesses in an economy upended by war and high tariffs.

“Particularly in this day and age of high inflation, their paycheck is not covering their expenses,” Vargas-Ramos explains. “You see more people relying on payday loans, using credit cards to just buy food or just go to the doctor, and this is unsustainable.”

But on a more personal level, Trump has gotten bolder in expressing disdain for some aspects of Latino cultures, particularly when it comes to language. In February, on America’s largest stage of the Super Bowl, reggaeton artist Bad Bunny centered Puerto Rican culture during his halftime show and celebrated Latino heritage more broadly, shouting out countries in Latin America and the Caribbean one by one in Spanish. Fans around the world hailed the performance as inspiring and radically creative, but Trump blasted the lack of English. He posted, “Nobody understands a word this guy is saying” and called the performance “an affront to the Greatness of America” that didn’t “represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence.”

Earlier this year, Trump dismissively said to Latin American leaders at a summit in Miami, “I’m not learning your damn language… that much I won’t do,” prompting light laughter.

His policy decisions, combined with this kind of rhetoric, may signal to Latino voters that their usefulness to him in 2024 won’t soften his desire for an America that centers Anglo roots, heritage, and culture.

Why should Trump care?

Despite President Trump’s allusions to running for a third term, he is a lame duck president who will not personally feel the blowback of voters turning away from him in 2026 and 2028. But his party will, if history proves to repeat itself. Typically, when US presidents see their approval ratings drop below 50%, their party loses seats in Congress, and Trump’s current approval rating hovers between 35% and 38%.

That’s precisely why Trump-voting Latinos’ shift away from Trump could spell trouble in the midterms for the GOP, which holds razor-thin majorities in the House and the Senate. According to Axios, in states like Texas, GOP leaders redrew district maps based on the assumption that Latino voters would keep showing up for them. In Texas’s District 15, where the Latino voting population is a massive 78%, races that were once taken for granted are competitive.

New Jersey and Virginia already saw a massive shift from Republican to Democratic support among Latino voters in the 2025 governors’ races. The UnidosUS poll also indicates that Latino voters are highly motivated, with 76% planning to cast ballots in the midterms. As the fastest-growing racial group in the United States, Latinos may play an outsized role in electoral politics for years to come.

Democrats will still have work to do

Despite the concerning news for Republicans, the UnidosUS poll indicates that their loss isn’t necessarily Democrats’ gain. While there has been a shift away from Trump, growing numbers of Latinos are also identifying themselves as independents rather than Democrats. Vargas-Ramos says the growth in the number of independent Latino voters suggests their votes are up for grabs, and parties will have to work to earn them. Recent estimates count Latino independents at 22%, which is larger than the 18% who identify as Republican. Vargas-Ramos also suggested that non-traditional candidates from outside of the party establishment — including celebrities, activists, and business leaders — may continue to have appeal.

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“It doesn’t mean that we tend to favor one party over the other, but we are willing to stop calling ourselves Democrats in greater numbers than we used to before,” Vargas-Ramos tells The Preamble. “Similarly, we are more likely to say, ‘No, I am independent,’ even if we may be leaning more towards the Democratic Party than the Republican Party. Those loosening ties, affiliations, or identities with a political party may make you more likely to be receptive to a political entrepreneur or candidate who is courting you.”

UnidosUS also found that Latino voters were motivated to vote for Democrats as a way of supporting their broader community, while Latino Republican voters were more motivated by support for specific candidates. In other words, Democratic-leaning Latino voters may be motivated by a sense of community loyalty or familiarity with the party rather than by enthusiasm for a particular bench of Democratic leaders.

“I don’t think that the Democratic Party has really done a good job of communicating with the Latino worker,” Perea tells The Preamble. “The Democratic Party [is] not treating this administration with gravity… about how it’s affecting the daily lived reality of a person who’s in the working class.”

Perea says the Democratic Party may need to learn how to reach certain voters from newly elected leaders like NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

“With Mamdani, with certain candidates of the socialist Democrats, who is it that they’re talking to? The working-class people. They’re not talking to middle-class America…The right used that message a lot, ‘This is all about workers, about Latino workers.’ And so that fact makes a working-class person feel included, even though they were not being really included in many of the ideas.”

For Vargas-Ramos, the shift in support away from Trump feels even more dangerous for democracy in general if Latino voters don’t see inspiring alternatives.

“They may not be supporting Donald Trump,” but “that doesn’t mean that they’re going to support Democrats,” he says. “My fear is that many of those Latino voters will just sit out the next both midterm elections and presidential election.”

Iran to Get Financial Relief

Under the peace deal that ended its war with the US, Iran will be allowed to sell its oil again and could eventually gain access to a $300 billion fund to rebuild its economy.

The terms come from a 14-point memorandum of understanding the two sides signed digitally over the weekend and plan to sign formally Friday in Geneva.

According to leaked copies of the deal, the US would issue waivers to let Iran resume oil exports. In return, Iran agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to pre-war shipping levels, and the US said it would lift its naval blockade. Access to the $300 billion development fund is also conditional: Iran would have to meet commitments on its nuclear program in later talks. US officials say the money would not come from the US government.

The document leaves two major questions to future negotiations: Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, and the full lifting of all sanctions against Iran, including the UN Security Council resolutions and the ones imposed by the US. Iran has also faced sanctions from IAEA, the nuclear watchdog agency, over its nuclear program. Iran reiterated that it would never build a nuclear weapon, a position it has long held.

Interest Rate Unchanged

The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged but signaled that a rate hike remains possible later this year. In the first policy meeting chaired by Kevin Warsh today, the Fed unanimously voted to keep the federal funds rate the same for the fourth consecutive meeting.

Updated projections showed that nine Fed policymakers expect at least one rate increase before the end of the year, while six project two or more hikes.

The Fed has held rates steady despite repeated calls from President Trump for lower borrowing costs.

Trump Pauses National Intelligence Director Confirmation

President Trump abruptly halted the confirmation of his nominee for director of national intelligence, setting a condition the Senate must meet before it can move forward.

Trump nominated Jay Clayton, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, but says he won’t allow Clayton to leave the prosecutor’s office for the new job until the Senate confirms the person who would replace him — James McDonald, Trump’s former personal lawyer.

The Senate Intelligence Committee postponed Clayton’s hearing after Trump directed him not to appear. Its chairman, Sen. Tom Cotton, said he still hopes to confirm Clayton soon.

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With Father’s Day just around the corner, it’s the perfect time to grab a book for your history-loving dad (or yourself, if you’re the history-loving dad!). For a truly sweeping, grand view of history, check out Origin Story. Author David Christian takes readers on a wild ride through the entire 13.8 billion years we’ve come to know as “history.” By focusing on defining events (thresholds), major trends, and profound questions about our origins, Christian exposes the hidden threads that tie everything together — from the creation of the planet to the advent of agriculture, nuclear war, and beyond.

Haitian TPS Case

Newly disclosed Homeland Security emails show that the Trump administration decided to end Haiti’s temporary protected status before completing the review the law requires, and that Trump’s political appointees overruled career experts who recommended keeping the protections in place.

Citing those emails, Haitian immigrants asked the Supreme Court yesterday to toss a case that could strip about 350,000 of them of their legal status and expose them to deportation. A federal judge in Washington blocked the termination in February, finding DHS had skipped the review and citing evidence that the decision was driven by “anti-Black and anti-Haitian animus.” The Trump administration then appealed to the Supreme Court, asking the judge to lift that block and to rule that courts have no power to review these decisions.

TPS is a congressionally created program that lets people from countries hit by disaster or conflict live and work in the US legally.

The justices already heard arguments in the case, Trump v. Miot, on April 29. The government’s main argument is that courts have no authority to review these decisions at all. The plaintiffs’ lawyers asked the Court to dismiss the government’s appeal without ruling on it.

Georgia Elections

President Trump saw mixed results in Georgia’s runoff elections yesterday, with one of his preferred candidates winning the Republican Senate primary but another losing the gubernatorial contest.

Rep. Mike Collins defeated former college football coach Deeke Dooley, who was backed by Gov. Brian Kemp, to secure the Republican nomination for the November Senate election. He will face Democratic incumbent Jon Ossoff.

In the Republican runoff for governor, however, billionaire Rick Jackson defeated Trump-backed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones. Jackson spent $100 million of his own money on the race and will face Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta, in November.

Education Department

The Trump administration has ended the Department of Education’s oversight of special education programs and civil rights enforcement. Those are among the department’s core jobs: its civil rights office investigates discrimination complaints in schools and its special education programs enforce the laws guaranteeing that students with disabilities receive a free and appropriate public education.

The department announced yesterday that the Justice Department will assume responsibility for civil rights enforcement and student privacy protections, while the Department of Health and Human Services will oversee special education initiatives for students with disabilities.

The administration has steadily reduced staffing at the Education Department. In March, officials said portions of the federal student loan portfolio would be transferred to the Treasury Department. That same month, the department relocated from its headquarters in Washington to a smaller office in the capital.

During his 2024 reelection campaign, Trump pledged to close the Education Department outright. After taking office, he signed an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin dismantling it. Only Congress can formally abolish the department.

Reflecting Pool Turns Green

President Trump spent millions painting the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool what he calls “American flag blue” for the country’s 250th birthday — and within days of refilling it, the water turned green with algae. Prior to the paint job, the basin of the pool was a neutral gray color.

The Interior Department said the bloom is residual algae from supply lines that sat idle during construction, called it part of the normal startup process, and said new equipment would keep the pool clear.

The cost has drawn scrutiny. When Trump launched the project this spring, he pegged it at $1.8 million. The price later rose to $13 million and is now estimated at $14.2 million. The Interior Department awarded the work to a Virginia firm without competitive bidding.