Dear Weekend Jolter,
To adapt Reagan, are you better off today than you were one war ago? Unless the “you” in that sentence is the Iranian government, the answer increasingly looks to be no.
The longer the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding is exposed to the harsh desert light, however, the brittler it starts to look. Seth Cropsey, putting the lamentable developments of the past couple weeks in context, emphasizes that despite the fanfare surrounding the pact, it is not a final status agreement — and that a return to conflict is all but inevitable. (As of Friday, this is already happening.)
“It is, rather, an extension of the April cease-fire,” he writes, “and includes no changes to the underlying realities that catalyzed the U.S.-Israel-Iran war in the first place.” The clock merely resets to 60 days.
For now, the terms are . . . disadvantageous. A “prompt and utter humiliation” for President Trump is how Philip Klein describes them. As Jim Geraghty puts it: “I suppose you can’t call it a wholesale surrender, in part because the U.S. government is paying retail prices in its concessions.”
Jim laments that Iran, at least on paper, is slated to receive $300 billion (from where is not entirely clear) for “reconstruction” and “development” while three key points of America’s economic leverage go away: a naval blockade, sanctions, and restrictions on the export of Iranian oil products. The regime might be better off financially than before the war, while having extracted U.S. commitments not to deploy additional forces in the region for now or interfere in the country’s internal affairs. Trump has pivoted from urging the Iranian people to “take over your government” to saying he never cared about regime change.
In exchange, the Strait of Hormuz is ostensibly reopening, but it remains hazardous, as an attack on a cargo ship Thursday plainly demonstrated, while Iran cooks up new ways to reap billions from control over the passageway.
It’s not all dismal on America’s side of the ledger. Dozens of Iranian aircraft, naval ships, and missile launchers were taken out over the course of the war. As Noah Rothman writes, America’s enemies witnessed the “rapid dismantling of the Iranian navy” and the establishment of air superiority over the country, among several aspects of the war that “must be taken into account by any great power that would directly challenge the U.S. military.” He adds, “That’s what makes Trump’s MOU so maddening. The weakness it projects will tempt America’s enemies, and the precedents it sets are likely to outlast the memory of America’s victories on the battlefield.” The Obama administration’s mistakes are being repeated, Noah writes.
And yet, this may not be the end. As violations of the MOU terms already begin, Jim notes that it’s only a matter of time before Iran further reneges, making space for the U.S. to do the same. Seth Cropsey questions how the purported reconstruction fund could be mustered and how concrete or achievable the sanctions-lifting provisions are. He advises that, as things progress, Lebanon will be key:
As more Lebanon crises occur, Iran’s roll of the dice will eventually force an Israeli response — even without U.S. consent — that will raise the odds of a return to war.
Trump wanted a deal principally because he hates being cornered. Thus, he refused to authorize an operation against southern Iran or a resumption of strikes after early April. However, there is no reason to expect he will allow a vague, unenforceable piece of paper to constrain his decision-making. The question for U.S. policy is how to generate the flexibility Trump will require when Iran inevitably pushes the region to the brink once again.
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In other news . . . we are running a “Defending America” webathon as we head into Fourth festivities, and we hope you’ll consider chipping in. To sweeten the pot, anyone who contributes $250 or more will receive a free copy of Rick Brookhiser’s forthcoming book on Lafayette, which will ship when it gets published on June 30.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
Very ominous signs out of New York: Democrats Go Off the Socialist Deep End
The U.K. trades in its prime minister, yet again: Keir Starmer Deserved His Fall
ARTICLES
Charles C. W. Cooke: The British Public Is to Blame for the U.K.’s Dysfunction
Charles C. W. Cooke: Darializa Avila Chevalier Is an Enemy of the American Creed
Noah Rothman: The DSA Is a Hate Group, and What It Hates Is America
Jeffrey Blehar: Darializa Chevalier and the Left’s Tea Party Moment
Jeffrey Blehar: Reluctant Reflections on a Reflecting Pool
Jim Geraghty: Trump’s Face Takes Over Washington
Rich Lowry: Trump’s Three Retreats
Abigail Anthony: Where Are the TERFs on Britain’s ‘Grooming Gangs’?
Joshua S. Treviño: Mexico’s Yūshūkan Mindset
Inez Feltscher Stepman: The Quietly Competent Side of the Trump Administration
Renu Mukherjee: The Ivy League’s Testing Turnaround Proves the SAT Is Still an Engine for Upward Mobility
Dan McLaughlin: A Clean Sweep for Trump and Written Immigration Law
Dan McLaughlin: Benjamin Franklin’s Presence at the Creation
Daniel J. Flynn: Thomas Jefferson’s True Masterpiece
Christian Schneider: End the Dad Slander
Kamden Mulder: New Fronts Open in the Election-Integrity Fight as Democrats Look to Mislead Voters
Michael Brendan Dougherty: What Social Media Looks Like to Men
Vahaken Mouradian: Jill Biden Sees No Evil
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Armond White revisits a classic: Talladega Nights Retraces Our Tracks
Brian Allen looks at the Declaration’s Connecticut roots: 1776? The American Revolution Really Started in the 1600s
PRESENTING: THE EXCERPTS
New York’s primary results that virtually guarantee a new batch of DSA lawmakers in Congress were as predictable as they were unsettling. Jeff Blehar tries to make sense of it all, while playing the lowlight reel:
There are famously nine Greek Muses, those classically feminine embodiments of inspiration in the creative arts. There was Terpsichore (dance), Clio (history), Polyhymnia (sacred poetry), etc. — the full range of artistic expression available to man, both then and now. To them we must now add a tenth: Darializa, the Muse of fully automated luxury communism.
For the professional cynic in me is positively inspired by the obscene absurdity of last night’s upset Democratic primary winner in New York’s 13th congressional district: the Mamdani-endorsed and spectacularly three-named Darializa Avila Chevalier. She is a career activist, police/prison abolitionist, open-borders fanatic, Hamas booster, and America-loathing communist. And that’s just the start.
Readers probably already know that Chevalier is a Democratic Socialist, without knowing what specifically that means beyond “wild-eyed, radical leftist.” So I cannot wait for every Democrat in the 120th Congress next year to be asked to answer for Chevalier’s many, many, many outrageous and outright bigoted statements over the years. (Credit where due: Many of these were unearthed back in late May/early June by the New York Post as well as inveterate archive-hound Andrew Kaczynski over at CNN.) It turns out that dear Darializa is not just your everyday “working-class Afro-Latina” — she’s a rabid true believer. A few select quotes and thoughts:
- “F*** you. We’re gonna defund and abolish [the police]. You don’t get to water down our movements.”
- “No. It means ending policing full stop. Period. No. more. police. at. all. ever. it’s very harmful to the work Black abolitionists have been doing for decades to dilute this movement.”
- “A world without borders — just like a world without prisons or police — is possible, necessary, and the only moral way forward.”
- “Abolish the border.”
- “All deportation is wrong.”
- “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my face on the American flag behind me.”
Elsewhere she casually accused both black and Arab men of being race traitors for “fetishizing ugly colonizer women.” Some people deny Israel’s right to exist, but when asked in August of 2020 how she would react if Israel ceased to exist, Chevalier outwitted her social media opponent: “Trick question — Israel doesn’t exist!” During that same period, she accused Joe Biden of being both a “rapist” and a “war criminal” (and you thought National Review was hard on him).
Abigail Anthony observes that the TERFs of Britain have been curiously subdued on the findings of the “grooming gangs” report:
The “Rape Gang Inquiry Report,” published last week as a product of an independent investigation led by Member of Parliament and current leader of the Restore Britain Party Rupert Lowe, is a distressing document about the so-called “grooming gangs” (translation: “child prostitution rings”) in the United Kingdom that are largely composed of Muslim or Pakistani men. (Read more from NR’s coverage on the report here and here.) It was neither an academic study nor an official government initiative with statutory powers to compel witnesses and document production, therefore it did not yield fresh statistical claims or unearth state documents. The report’s value is its pages of harrowing testimony provided by victims, their families, whistleblowers, and other individuals who observed the gangs. The survivors recall years of enduring sexual exploitation, substance misuse, torture, trafficking, and repeat pregnancies, as well as instances of forced marriages and conversion to Islam — all consistent with existing reporting and previous government-led reviews. However, the report in particular underscores how England itself is complicit: Authorities and staff in the police, the schools, the social-care industry, and the health-care system all failed to intervene or even encouraged the gang activity, in part because they feared accusations of “racism.” Additionally, the report explores cultural and religious factors that motivated the gangsters, such as “the doctrine of Muslim superiority” and clannish norms.
There is no possible happy ending to this horrific saga, but thankfully, the report has facilitated a global conversation about sexual violence, immigration, moral cowardice, and the ineptitude of British institutions. Rupert Lowe’s post on X announcing the report’s publication has amassed nearly 50 million views by now, while Elon Musk himself amplified the issue over the past week.
Yet celebrated feminists — including those in the United Kingdom — have largely remained silent about the rape gangs, even though they unremittingly raised alarm about gender-related laws on the grounds that increased accommodation for “trans women,” meaning men, would directly harm women and girls. To be entirely clear, that argument was and is correct: Policies that permit an individual to access a single-sex facility in accordance with one’s self-asserted “gender identity,” rather than conditioning access on the basis of sex, enable predatory men to target women and girls in particularly vulnerable environments, resulting in instances of sexual misconduct that includes rape, nonconsensual intimate photography, and self-pleasuring. However, it does strike me as odd, perhaps even hypocritical, that the women who cultivated public personas as advocates for enhanced “women’s safety” in light of “trans inclusive” policies have largely disregarded a women’s safety scandal that is more consequential and more widespread.
And now, a few words from Charles on the U.K.’s revolving PMs:
I am not offering up a defense for any of the figures who have run Britain over the last two decades. Keir Starmer included, they are all craven mediocrities. Rather, I am attempting to lay the blame for that where it ultimately belongs — which is with the British public. Vote-seekers are professionally obliged to pretend that Britain has had seven prime ministers in ten years because there is something abstractly wrong with the “system” that the selection of the right leader will magically fix. I am not so obliged, which allows me to say without fear or favor that the real reason that Britain has had seven prime ministers in ten years is that the British public would rather blame its own lazy schizophrenia on the Westminster class than to look inward and acknowledge that it has routinely demanded its own decline. “Our doubts,” wrote Shakespeare, “are traitors / And make us lose the good we oft might win / By fearing to attempt.” They don’t want to hear it, but, in this instance, the doubts, fears, and treachery here are the voters’.
The numbers are stark. In 2008, U.S. GDP per capita was about 25 percent higher than the U.K.’s. Today, it is 40 percent higher, such that were Britain to become the 51st American state, it would be poorer than all of the existing 50 — including Mississippi. (Per capita GDP in Mississippi is $55,900; in the U.K., it is $53,200.) Since 2008, average household incomes in the U.S. have gone from about 36 percent higher than Britain’s to about 63 percent higher. Over the same period, real GDP per capita has increased by around 65 percent in the United States, and by about 3 percent in the United Kingdom; British productivity has been effectively flat; and American stocks have left their British counterparts in the dust, with the S&P 500 vastly outperforming the FTSE 100. In 2026, Britain has only a handful of innovative companies, an alarmingly limited ability to project military force, and, despite the fact that the Exchequer is on course to collect a larger share of national income in taxes than at any point in the postwar era, a raft of crumbling public services about which voters never stop complaining.
Given all this, one would expect to see considerable support in Britain for radical change — not simply in who is running the government but in the core presumptions that inform that government’s approach. And yet, incredibly, no such movement is afoot.
ICYMI, and in the spirit of America 250, Dan McLaughlin had a wonderful historical piece last weekend about Ben Franklin:
On June 21, 1776, Thomas Jefferson presented Benjamin Franklin and John Adams with his first complete draft of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin’s role at that critical hour — which marked his return to the deliberations in Philadelphia after arduous months away on a journey that nearly killed him — reflected the great prestige that he brought to the cause of independence. In 1776, at 70 years old, Franklin was the most famous man in America, and the most prominent and respected American in the world. And by now, he was a rebel against his king.
A man of status and reputation elevates such an endeavor. That was true in the Civil War of Robert E. Lee, who lent a dignity to perceptions of the Confederate cause that it would otherwise have lacked, given the contrast between Lee’s gravitas, family name, and long service in the national army and the quality or pedigree of many of the other Confederate leaders. For Franklin, long esteemed in England, France, and the German states and with a son in the king’s service as a royal governor, the decision of a man so wise to put so much at risk was a public symbol of the seriousness of the patriot cause.
In understanding Franklin’s career in and after the American Revolution, it is useful to recall how much of his life was already behind him as a subject of the British kings before the Revolution came. In 1754, when 22-year-old George Washington touched off the conflict that became the Seven Years’ War (known here as the French and Indian War), Franklin was already 48 years old, a substantial age in an era when even the wealthy and prominent often died in their thirties or forties. He was already retired from his primary career as a newspaperman, and already well-known enough in Europe for his scientific experiments that King Louis XV of France ordered a test of Franklin’s investigations into lightning.
CODA
Let’s throw back today to Blood, Sweat & Tears. Every time I listen to them, I realize that I don’t listen to them enough. (David Clayton-Thomas, R.I.P.)
Catch you next time, and thanks for reading.