On the menu today: It’s only Wednesday, and it’s already been a rough week for the Iranian mullahs, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, and Texas Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett. We’ll start on the domestic front first.
Crockett Crumbles in Texas
I think I was in a cable news network green room with Texas Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett once, before she became as high-profile as she is today. As I remember, she was nice. But that was before the representative became Jasmine Crockett, the brand.
The Democratic Celebrity-Industrial Complex did not push Crockett quite as much as it pushed Beto O’Rourke or Stacey Abrams. But the Dallas-area representative got her share of enthusiastic profiles — Ms. magazine asking her about “politics, patriarchy, profits and the presidency.” She became a regular guest on MSNBC, now called MSNOW. Jimmy Kimmel loved having her on his program. She somehow became known for using the f-word, in a party that clearly still thinks that’s a sign of authenticity and edginess. (George Carlin died nearly 18 years ago. Andrew Dice Clay is now old enough to collect Social Security.)
In a normal political environment and healthier culture, the May 2024 House Oversight Committee meeting that devolved into juvenile name-calling would be remembered as an embarrassment for all involved; former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene sneered at Crockett, “I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading,” and Crockett shot back, referring to Greene’s “bleach blond, bad-built butch body.”
Instead, Crockett’s pastor called her to tell her that her remarks had gone viral. Crockett trademarked the phrase and started selling merchandise. In the following weeks, Crockett “joined President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Air Force One to launch the campaign’s Black voter outreach effort.” She gave a keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention and was a national co-chair of Kamala Harris’s campaign. She became the top fundraiser in the Texas congressional delegation.
Instead of being rebuked, Crockett was effectively rewarded for her behavior during that hearing; it helped make her a star in the party. When you reward something, you get more of it. After the election, she told Vanity Fair, “I don’t trust white women,” lamented that Latinos have a “slave mentality,” and complained that Congress is “old as s***.” She called Texas GOP Governor Greg Abbott, who is in a wheelchair, “governor Hot Wheels” and then claimed the term had nothing to do with his handicap.
A key question in American politics is whether Donald Trump rose to the presidency twice because he says all kinds of outrageous, provocative, controversial, and insulting things, or whether he rose to the presidency twice despite saying all kinds of outrageous, provocative, controversial, and insulting things. I think a lot of people who like saying obnoxious things want to believe that it is the former. I suspect it is the latter; a lot of candidates have tried to imitate Trump’s schtick and fallen short in both primaries and general elections.
And then, in July 2025, The Atlantic wrote a profile of Crockett that was more or less forced to acknowledge that the representative was not ready for prime time. (The headline, “A Democrat for the Trump Era,” is not complimentary if you, like much of The Atlantic, see the Trump era as a modern Dark Ages.) Correspondent Elaine Godfrey, spending time with the candidate, revealed that the representative’s in-your-face social-media-star persona wasn’t an act:
At the Waldorf, I watched her deliver a quick Oversight-campaign pitch via Zoom. It was a virtual meeting of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, she’d explained to me beforehand. But then, after the call, she wasn’t sure. “CAPAC is the Asian caucus, right?” she asked. “Yes,” the aide confirmed. “That would’ve been bad,” Crockett said with a laugh. She can also be brusque. During our interview at the Waldorf, she dialed up a staffer in D.C. in front of me and scolded him for an unclear note on her schedule. Another time, in the car, after an aide brought Crockett a paper bag full of food from a fundraiser, she peered inside, scrunched her nose, and said, “This looks like crap.”
But the particularly odd wrinkle was Crockett’s belief that she could retroactively cancel the profile, because she didn’t like Godfrey interviewing other members of Congress:
As for her colleagues, four days before this story was published, Crockett called me to express frustration that I had reached out to so many House members without telling her first. She was, she told me, “shutting down the profile and revoking all permissions.”
It doesn’t work that way. Once you’ve talked to a journalist on the record, those words are out there and can’t be taken back. It didn’t look good for Crockett when her security staff threw Godfrey out of a campaign event earlier this week; Crockett said it never happened, and then Godfrey posted the audio. Crockett also claimed that Godfrey had been sued for defamation; that has never happened, according to The Atlantic.
You may have seen a recent X post by a mainstream journalist calling New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “media-savvy.” As many have pointed out, it’s easy to be “media-savvy” when you’re a beloved progressive Democrat who rarely if ever encounters critical coverage.
Many Republicans were hoping that Crockett would beat James Talarico in last night’s Texas Democratic Senate primary, as her caustic style was likely utterly unelectable in a state as red as the Lone Star State. The polling had been contradictory. Last night, Talarico won, 52.9 percent to 45.7 percent.
Crockett will serve out the remainder of her term. She’ll probably become an MSNOW commentator next year. She could run again in her newly redrawn district, which scores a D+19 in the Cook Partisan Voting Index, in 2028 if she chooses. But the prospects for an ambitious Texas Democrat are comparable to an ambitious New York or California Republican. Any bid for statewide office begins as the longest of long shots.
And one wonders if Crockett’s boundary-breaking, four-letter-word-dropping identity only works to the degree it does when lots of Democrats believe the country is being governed by the devil himself. What Crockett conveyed in her remarks about Greene and Abbott is contempt, and that spiteful sentiment can take you far in this era; more than a million Texans voted for her yesterday. But more than 1.1 million voted for Talarico; Republicans may find the Temu brand Beto O’Rourke utterly insufferable, but he’s a more positive and unifying figure than Crockett.
Our Jeff Blehar looks at last night’s results and sees a dire scenario for Texas Republicans approaching fast, unless incumbent Senator John Cornyn wins the runoff:
On the other hand, that means the Democrats have avoided stepping on a landmine and instead have chosen a candidate with real potential to win against someone as damaged as [Ken] Paxton. We will wait until May, when the final matchup is set, but assuming Paxton becomes the nominee as predicted, the Texas Senate race now goes to DEFCON-1. Texas, with its numerous media markets, is an enormously expensive state to campaign in — and now, for the first time in years, both parties will desperately need to. A gapingly vast money pit has just opened up for both parties in the Lone Star State.
Meanwhile, in Iran . . .
If the U.S. wanted to target the parts of the regime that are most directly attacking the protesters, it would likely be locations of the Basij militia, or the “The Sâzmân-e Basij-e Mostaz’afin” (“The Organization for Mobilization of the Oppressed”). . . .
The Tharallah Central Security Headquarters acts as the IRGC’s elite domestic security command.
27th Mohammad Rasoul Allah Division (Tehran) — A mechanized and urban combat division. Formed during the war, now specializes in riot control, rapid deployment inside Greater Tehran, and crowd suppression.
20th Ramazan Armored Brigade (Hassanabad, S. Tehran) — An armored brigade with T-72 tanks and BMPs for deterrent power. Located at the capital’s southern perimeter.
The 27th Division is based near Pasdaran Avenue and has long been tied to the Vali Asr Garrison in north-central Tehran.
As far as I can recall, that’s the most specific I’ve ever been in describing a potential target for a U.S. or allied country bombing run. Mind you, that’s all from open-source intelligence. While hostile regimes may try to be discreet about the street locations or GPS coordinates of their bases, it’s often hard to hide motor pools, hardened vehicle depots, and the movements of large numbers of people in military units or militias.
The Wall Street Journal, this morning:
Israeli airstrikes have targeted people responsible for internal security, from members of the Basij paramilitary force to senior intelligence officials, the Israeli military said. The U.S. has also hit some domestic-security agencies, including the Tehran headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the powerful group responsible for defending and perpetuating the regime. . . .
Among the targets in recent days was the IRGC’s Tharallah headquarters on Sunday, a central cog in the forces’ protest-suppression machine. During times of unrest, Tharallah coordinates intelligence, policing and the Basij, as well as psychological warfare.
On May 13, 2025, the DefaPress, an outlet controlled by the Iranian regime’s General Staff of the Armed Forces, published an article about the vulnerabilities of the U.S. Air Force’s B-52 long-range bomber:
The B-52’s weaknesses make it an easy target for air defense systems. Its primary weakness is its inability to evade radar detection. Additionally, its relatively low speed gives defense systems ample time to target it with surface-to-air missiles. In other words, the B-52 has been effective in proxy wars and asymmetric conflicts (e.g., large-scale bombings) but exhibits clear vulnerabilities against modern air defense systems.
All of that may be true enough on paper or in theory, but as of this morning, at least three B-52 bombers have completed strike missions. Each B-52 can carry up to 70,000 pounds of mixed ordnance.
The fact that B-52s are flying over Iran is a sign that the Pentagon has determined that the Iranian air defense systems, and whatever is left of Iran’s air force, do not present a threat to those aircraft.
In September, the Hudson Institute’s Can Kasapoğlu examined what China had supplied to the Iranian air defense systems:
Some reports suggest that Iran has already acquired Chinese SAMs — most likely the HQ-9 and possibly the HQ-16 variants. The HQ-9 is a hybrid that marries the Russian SA-20 (specifically, the S-300 PMU-1 and S-300 PMU-2 variants) with higher-end command and control, radar, and seeker technologies. These higher-end technologies bear similarities to US and even Israeli assets, which Beijing has likely learned about through espionage.
Because China has a more advanced microelectronics industry than Russia, the HQ-9 baseline likely boasts better sensors than its Russian counterpart. So, while the Chinese SAM system is no silver bullet — especially against Israel’s F-35I Adir — a dense HQ-9 network could make Iran’s airspace much more dangerous for enemy combatants.
Whatever the Iranians paid for those Chinese-built air defense systems, it was probably too much. Hudson’s Zineb Riboua writes today on NR’s homepage that the U.S.–Israeli joint operation against Iran is “catastrophic” for Xi Jinping. The performance of U.S.-built weapons systems compared to Chinese-built weapons systems is something for him to think about as he contemplates his regime’s policies regarding Taiwan.
ADDENDUM: From the Corner, yesterday: “If you’ve been around long enough, you start to see the same patterns emerge. The current situation is not all that different from the U.S. and coalition allies hunting Iraq’s Scud missile launchers in January 1991. Saddam Hussein had used the Scuds to attack Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain.”