POLITICS

THE HAGUE — Days before NATO was set to convene in the Netherlands, one of its top commanders, Pierre Vandier, tasked with transforming the alliance for the next fight, put out a call: Britain will need to step up its intelligence contributions to the alliance going forward.

“The UK has this in its DNA,” Vandier said.

It was an acknowledgment that the United States, pivoting toward a far greater intelligence threat from China, may leave its European allies behind in their own existential fight with Russia. A lack of reliability on the world’s leading AI superpower, European officials say, will render the continent vulnerable in a race for intelligence superiority set to revolutionize global battlefields.

The rush toward artificial intelligence has been a strong undercurrent at the NATO Summit in the Hague this week, serving not only as a gathering for leaders of the alliance, but also as a defense industry forum for emerging power players in Silicon Valley, treated in Holland’s gilded halls as a new kind of royalty.

“AI is going to be an important part of warfare going forward, but it’s still very new, and NATO tends not to be at the tip of the spear of innovation — and there is some division within the alliance on how to develop AI, when it comes to AI regulation and safety,” said Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Tech companies don’t hold the same pride of place in the European economic system, and they’re not consumed with the need to compete with China militarily — they are much more focused on Russia,” Bergmann added. “While the U.S. is about winning the AI race, Europeans are watching what’s happening in Ukraine and saying, ‘we just need to deter Russia.’”

So far, for European capitals, that has meant incorporating powerful data collection and processing systems into defense departments and improving the performance of automated surveillance systems and drones — skills well within Europe’s capabilities. Several German and French companies, such as Helsing, Azur and Quantum Systems, are already developing products based on what they are seeing in Ukraine.

But the next fight will require technologies that dwarf existing drone capabilities, experts said.

“We’ve been predicting for a while that there would be integration of AI into military research and development and defense systems, and I expect, for example, that advanced cyber capabilities will play an important role in the coming years,” said Jonas Vollmer, chief operating officer of the AI Futures Project. “Europe has influence, but it is grappling with the difficult reality that they don’t have access or strong domestic development of frontier AI systems, and they are pretty far behind.”

Last year, NATO allies agreed to speed up the adoption of artificial intelligence in its operations. There are signs the bloc senses urgency to do so, signing an agreement with Palantir, a U.S.-based technology company, to incorporate AI into its warfighting systems after just six months of negotiations.

The United States and China are far ahead of competitors in the race for AI superiority, measured in raw computing power and proximity to general artificial intelligence — AI that has human-level cognitive capabilities to learn and develop on its own – and ultimately to superintelligence, surpassing the human mind.

Still, the United Kingdom is a serious player in the field. The kingdom ranks third in government investment in AI research anywhere in the world and maintains strong partnerships with some of the most powerful U.S. players.

In its most recent defense strategy, also published shortly before the NATO summit, Britain committed to integrate artificial intelligence into its “NATO-first” national security approach. “Forecasts of when Artificial General Intelligence will occur are uncertain but shortening, with profound implications for Defence,” the document reads.

Europe’s race for intelligence capabilities is driven, in part, by lessons learned on the battlefields of Ukraine. But Russia is not seen as an AI powerhouse in and of itself. Moscow instead uses low-cost tests of drone incursions and cyberattacks to keep pressure on the alliance, Vandier told the Times of London in an interview. “The aim, I think, is to consume all our energy in purely defensive actions, which are very costly,” he said.

Whether Russia can enhance its own AI capabilities is an open question.

“The key ingredients of being at the frontier with AI are talent and data centers,” said Vollmer, of the AI Futures Project.

“Russia lags far behind on both,” he added, “but they can collaborate with China, of course.”

NEW YORK — Zohran Mamdani declared victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary Tuesday night after Andrew Cuomo conceded the race in a stunning upset, as the young, progressive upstart who was virtually unknown when the contest began built a substantial lead over the more experienced but scandal-scarred former governor.

Though the race’s ultimate outcome will still be decided by a ranked choice count, Mamdani took a commanding position just hours after the polls closed.

With victory all but assured, Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist who ran an energetic campaign centered on the cost of living, told supporters, “I will be your Democratic nominee for the mayor of New York City.”

“I will be the mayor for every New Yorker, whether you voted for me, for Governor Cuomo, or felt too disillusioned by a long-broken political system to vote at all,” he said. “I will work to be a mayor you will be proud to call your own.”

Cuomo, who had been the front-runner throughout a race that was his comeback bid from a sexual harassment scandal, conceded the election, telling a crowd that he had called Mamdani to congratulate him.

“Tonight is his night. He deserved it. He won,” Cuomo told supporters.

Cuomo trailed Mamdani by a significant margin in the first choice ballots and faced an exceedingly difficult pathway to catching up when ballots are redistributed in New York City’s ranked choice voting process.

Mamdani, a member of the state Assembly since 2021, would be the city’s first Muslim and Indian American mayor if elected. Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams skipped the primary. He’s running as an independent in the general election. Cuomo also has the option of running in the general election.

“We are going to take a look and make some decisions,” Cuomo said.

Cuomo and Mamdani were a study in political contrasts and could have played stand-ins for the larger Democratic Party’s ideological divide, with one candidate a fresh-faced progressive and the other an older moderate.

Cuomo characterized the city as a threatening, out-of-control place desperate for an experienced leader who could restore order. He brought the power of a political dynasty to the race, securing an impressive array of endorsements from important local leaders and labor groups, all while political action committees created to support his campaign pulled in staggering sums of cash.

Mamdani, meanwhile, offered an optimistic message that life in the city could improve under his agenda, which was laser-focused on the idea that a mayor has the power to do things that lower the cost of living. The party’s progressive wing coalesced behind him and he secured endorsements from two of the country’s foremost progressives, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Unofficial results from the New York City’s Board of Elections showed that Mamdani was ranked on more ballots than Cuomo. Mamdani was listed as the second choice by tens of thousands of more voters than Cuomo. And the number of votes that will factor into ranked choice voting is sure to shrink. More than 200,000 voters only listed a first choice, the Board of Elections results show, meaning that Mamdani’s performance in the first round may ultimately be enough to clear the 50% threshold.

The race’s ultimate outcome could say something about what kind of leader Democrats are looking for during President Donald Trump’s second term.

The primary winner will go on to face incumbent Adams, a Democrat who decided to run as an independent amid a public uproar over his indictment on corruption charges and the subsequent abandonment of the case by Trump’s Justice Department. Republican Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, will be on the ballot in the fall’s general election.

The rest of the pack has struggled to gain recognition in a race where nearly every candidate has cast themselves as the person best positioned to challenge Trump’s agenda.

Comptroller Brad Lander, a liberal city government stalwart, made a splash last week when he was arrested after linking arms with a man federal agents were trying to detain at an immigration court in Manhattan. In the final weeks of the race, Lander and Mamdani cross endorsed one another in an attempt to boost their collective support and damage Cuomo’s bid under the ranked choice voting system.

Among the other candidates are City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, hedge fund executive Whitney Tilson and former city Comptroller Scott Stringer.

Mamdani’s grassroots run has been hard not to notice.

His army of young canvassers relentlessly knocked on doors throughout the city seeking support. Posters of his grinning mug were up on shop windows. You couldn’t get on social media without seeing one of his well-produced videos pitching his vision — free buses, free child care, new apartments, a higher minimum wage and more, paid for by new taxes on rich people.

That youthful energy was apparent Tuesday evening, as both cautiously optimistic canvassers and ecstatic supporters lined the streets of Central Brooklyn on a sizzling hot summer day, creating a party-like atmosphere that spread from poll sites into the surrounding neighborhoods.

Outside his family’s Caribbean apothecary, Amani Kojo, a 23-year-old first-time voter, passed out iced tea to Mamdani canvassers, encouraging them to stay hydrated.

“It’s 100 degrees outside and it’s a vibe. New York City feels alive again,” Kojo said, raising a pile of Mamdani pamphlets. “It feels very electric seeing all the people around, the flyers, all the posts on my Instagram all day.”

Cuomo and some other Democrats have cast Mamdani as unqualified. They say he doesn’t have the management chops to wrangle the city’s sprawling bureaucracy or handle crises. Critics have also taken aim at Mamdani’s support for Palestinian human rights.

In response, Mamdani has slammed Cuomo over his sexual harassment scandal and his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cuomo resigned in 2021 after a report commissioned by the state attorney general concluded that he had sexually harassed at least 11 women. He has always maintained that he didn’t intentionally harass the women, saying he had simply fallen behind what was considered appropriate workplace conduct.

Izaguirre writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Jake Offenhartz contributed to this report.

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles is the preeminent center for pediatric medicine in Southern California. For three decades, it’s also been one of the world’s leading destinations for trans care for minors. Don’t take my word for it: CHLA boasts about its record of providing “high-quality, evidence-based, medically essential care for transgender and gender-diverse youth, young adults, and their families.”

Earlier this month, it abruptly ended all that, telling its staff in a meeting that the Center for Transyouth Health and Development would be shutting down. (My daughter was, until this announcement, a patient at the center.)

Did some new medical breakthrough, some unexpected research drive the decision to cut off care for roughly 2,500 patients with no warning? No. It came, the hospital said, after “a thorough legal and financial assessment of the increasingly severe impacts of recent administrative actions and proposed policies.”

In other words, the hospital caved. In advance.

CHLA made the move a week before the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in the United States vs. Skrmetti, which upheld a Tennessee law that bans most gender-affirming care for minors. More than 20 states have passed similar laws that prevent trans minors from accessing many different forms of medical care. The decision essentially shields those laws from future legal challenges.

But the Supreme Court ruling had nothing to do with CHLA’s decision. There is no such law in California.

Why, then, without any court order or law, did the center suddenly close, leaving so many young patients in need of doctors, medications and procedures? You can probably guess the answer.

Pressure from the Trump administration threatened the hospital with severe repercussions if it continued to serve these patients. One form of pressure arrived in a May 28 letter from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, signed by its administrator, the former TV host Dr. Mehmet Oz. He announced that his agency would seek financial records on a range of gender-affirming care procedures from several dozen hospitals.

Being faced with the choice of discontinuing care for an entire class of patients or battling the administration over access to financial records is not a dilemma any doctor wants to face. To be clear, this is not a debate over medical science or proper care for trans youth. CHLA followed the science — until it didn’t. This is a debate over ideology about who is deserving of medical care.

In the past few months, we have seen powerful law firms, large corporations and universities forced to contend with difficult bargains. Settle with an administration that has singled you out? Or take the battle to court?

In February, when Children’s Hospital announced that it would stop taking on new patients in its Transyouth Center, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta sternly reminded them that they had a legal obligation to continue to provide this care. The hospital quickly reversed course.

That’s why the recent choice of the CHLA board marks a huge shift that could potentially affect care for not just trans youth patients but so many others as well.

Because what the board of CHLA did was, in fact, a choice. Moreover, CHLA’s choice went against its own medical advice about the urgent need for such care. On its website, the hospital claims it was “immensely proud of this legacy of caring for young people on the path to achieving their authentic selves.”

When confronted with threats, the board chose to sacrifice the care of one group of patients in the hope that it could continue to care for others. Perhaps the board concluded that it was following a crude, utilitarian logic: denying the medical needs of some would allow it to provide for many more.

That’s not how I see it. In caving to blackmail, they have endorsed the administration’s bigotry. They have demonstrated that trans youth are expendable. The board has made it clear that this group of patients is not as deserving of care as others. When CHLA faced actual pressure, its own record of providing “high-quality, evidence-based, medically essential care” simply became too inconvenient.

This time, it was trans youth. Who will it be next time? Disabled children? Children born outside the U.S.? CHLA agreed to play the game rather than call it out for what it is.

As a journalist, I occasionally grant anonymity to a source. It’s not an action I take lightly. The decision means that if pressured, even when threatened with contempt of court, I will not reveal their identity. Thankfully, it’s never come to that for me, although other journalists have gone to jail to protect sources. If I were to break that pledge once, I could never in good conscience grant it again.

I now wonder how doctors at CHLA can ever look their young patients in the eye again and promise that, no matter what, they will fight for their care.

Gabriel Kahn is a professor of professional practice at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Sports offer an escape, an oasis, a relief from the anxiety and troubles of day-to-day living. There’s the competition, of course. There’s also a reassuring certainty.

Clear-cut winners and losers. Scores meticulously kept. Rules and boundaries that are officiated and maintained as firmly and precisely as a chalked third base line.

In short, none of the compromise or messy ambiguities of daily life, which is part of the appeal and also part of the fantasy.

And it is fantasy to try to divorce sports from the times we live in and the events that unfold, sometimes frightfully, beyond the comfortable confines of the stadium and arena.

Take the Los Angeles Dodgers and the team’s fitful response to the immigration raids terrorizing large swaths of its fan base.

The team, one of Southern California’s most revered (and lucrative) institutions, caved last week amid a growing public outcry and committed $1 million to help families affected by the Trump administration’s heavy-handed immigration policies. Further initiatives, the organization promised, are on the way.

Escapism only goes so far.

“Sports are political through and through,” said Jules Boykoff, a former pro soccer player-turned-political scientist. “and to deny it is to deny reality.”

Amy Bass, a professor of sport studies at Manhattanville University and the author of numerous works on the subject, agreed.

“Sport is part of our cultural, political, social and economic landscape,” Bass said. “It is an industry that pays people. It is an industry that entertains people. It is an industry that expresses some of our greatest moments and our most tragic moments.

“There is nothing,” she said, “that you can’t talk about through the lens of sport.”

Or shout about and argue over, as the case may be.

The Dodgers’ gesture struck many as too little, too late; an unforced error, if you will.

“That’s the best way to describe how the Boys in Blue have acted,” my columnizing colleague Gustavo Arellano wrote, “as the city emblazoned on their hats and road jerseys battles Donald Trump’s toxic alphabet soup of federal agencies that have conducted immigration sweeps across Los Angeles over the past two weeks.”

The Dodgers were studiously vague in last week’s capitulation, er, announcement of $1 million in good will payments. No mention, much less condemnation, of the brutality that ICE has employed in some of its enforcement actions. No reference to the parents separated from their children. No acknowledgment of the innocents — including U.S. citizens — swept up in some of the Trump administration’s indiscriminate raids.

“What’s happening in Los Angeles has reverberated among thousands upon thousands of people,” said Stan Kasten, the team president, in a masterwork of opacity and euphemism. “We believe that by committing resources and taking action, we will continue to support and uplift the communities of Greater Los Angeles.”

But, really, is it any surprise the team would first duck, then seek cover in such platitudes?

Lest we forget, the Dodgers are first and foremost a business, just like every other professional sports franchise. Michael Jordan may or may not have uttered the quote famously attributed to him — “Republicans buy sneakers, too” — as a reason for pro athletes and their teams to steer clear of politics. But it speaks resoundingly to a bottom-line truism of the sporting world.

Put another way, yes, the Dodgers have a substantial and remunerative following in the Latino community, which is very much under siege. But Trump devotees also fill a lot of seats and buy a lot of Dodger Dogs.

If we’re being honest, how many of those who root for the Dodgers — or any sports franchise, for that matter — would be more than willing to yield the moral high ground if it means a winning season and championship? Righteousness, after all, isn’t reflected in the standings.

So what’s a cross-pressured, community-grounded, profit-seeking sports organization to do?

Events, spiraling downward by the day, may have left the Dodgers little choice.

“The more people are affected, maybe I shouldn’t say affected but traumatized, by what’s happening on the streets of L.A. and the neighborhoods of L.A. … this left the Dodgers with much less room in which to try to shimmy through without saying anything,” said Boykoff, who teaches political science at Oregon’s Pacific University. “The circumstances in a lot of ways forced their hand.”

So the organization weighed in — belatedly, tepidly — leaving very few people happy or satisfied.

Little surprise there.

If we’re looking for a bright side, perhaps it’s this: Maybe instead of pretending sports exist in a pristine, politics-free vacuum, we can acknowledge their centrality to our daily lives and find, if not commonality, at least a common ground for discussion and debate.

“We can talk about history, we can talk about economics, we can talk about social change,” Bass said. “We can talk about how sport actually move political needles.”

Not, of course, on the playing field. But in the stands, in sports bars, at tailgate parties, on talk radio, wherever fans of various cloth gather.

“The more we recognize it,” Bass said, “the more that we can see that sport can actually provide this landscape for having very difficult conversations through a place that brings a lot of different kinds of people into the same space.”

It may seem far-fetched at a time of such deep and abiding divisions. But what are sports about if not hope and aspiration?

A tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Iran has slightly dampened the threat that the United States could be further dragged into an international conflict.

But many Americans are approaching the Fourth of July with a sense of trepidation if not outright fear — that such a war could still be on the horizon and that there is currently an increased risk of a terrorist attack in America because of it.

For so many reasons, we are a nation on edge. Which is why we have to be careful to not allow our fears to overtake our commitment to civil rights.

“Autocrats almost always use emergencies, sometimes real ones, sometimes exaggerated ones, and sometimes invented ones … to accumulate power,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University and author of “How Democracies Die.”

None of the political experts I spoke with in past days said they thought President Trump planned the Iran bombing for his domestic agenda — that would be really extreme. But most shared Levitsky’s concern that it is in moments of anxiety, when society is apprehensive of external threats, that authoritarians find the most fertile ground for increasing their domestic power — because too often, people willingly give up freedoms in exchange for perceived safety.

Hiroshi Motomura, a UCLA law professor who advised the Obama-Biden transition team on immigration policy, said that trade-off means “the situation with Iran and Trump’s immigration policy are very closely intertwined.”

No place is more likely to see that intersection of international and domestic policy more bluntly than California, and Los Angeles in particular.

Los Angeles is a “test case,” Brad Jones told me, where the Trump administration is already pushing to see how far it can go. He’s a political science professor at UC Davis.

“This is a very opportunistic presidency, and any opportunity that they can use to forward their immigration agenda, I think they’ll take full advantage of it,” Jones said.

We already have the Marines and National Guard on the streets, and under federal control, supposedly because Los Angeles is in the grip of violent chaos. Although Angelenos know this is ridiculous, the courts have, for now, sided with Trump that this deployment of troops on U.S. soil is within his power. And much of America, inundated with right-wing versions of current immigration protests, is seeing on a daily basis a narrative of lawlessness that seems to justify Trump’s crackdowns — including the arrest or detention of Democratic lawmakers.

Benjamin Radd is a professor at UCLA, an expert on Iran and a senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations. He was featured in the documentary “War Game” last year about how a military insurgency could play out in the United States.

Not long ago — before the National Guard was deployed in L.A. against the will of Gov. Gavin Newsom — Radd was hired by a veterans group, which he declined to identify, to game out what would happen if Trump federalized the National Guard against the will of governors and turned them on the American public.

“And lo and behold, here we are now,” Radd said.

In his simulation, the pretend Trump didn’t invoke the Insurrection Act, a law that could further a president’s ability to deploy the military within the United States.

But in the real world, it’s a concern that Trump would — either because of a genuine threat, or a Trumped-up one. Rudd said that would be a “big red line.”

“I’m waiting to see if this Donald Trump will actually do that, because invoking the act will be able to give him more of those emergency powers that right now are being stymied at the courts,” he said.

Los Angeles, Rudd points out, is home to a large community of Iranian Americans, of which he is a member.

It’s not a huge stretch of the imagination to dream up a scenario in which the government sees this community as a potential threat if the conflict in the Middle East continues, as Japanese Americans were once viewed as a threat during World War II. Rudd said he didn’t see the likelihood of a mass internment, but pointed out that the government has already detained and deported students speaking out on the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza.

“Who gets swept up in that when you’re dealing with ethically diverse metropolises like Los Angeles that have a complex background and mix of people?” he asks.

Already, the administration has announced the arrests of 11 undocumented Iranians across the U.S. in the last few days.

“We have been saying we are getting the worst of the worst out — and we are,” Homeland Security Department Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “We don’t wait until a military operation to execute; we proactively deliver on President Trump’s mandate to secure the homeland.”

Trump’s “entire playbook on immigration has been to characterize immigration as invasion and immigrants as invaders,” Motomura said. “Having a military conflict with Iran allows Trump to link any actions by Iran or its proxies as further evidence of invasion … and as even further proof that he must take drastic emergency measures against foes both domestic and foreign.”

Levitsky said that the “Trump administration is clearly learning how useful it is” to portray immigration as a national security emergency. He points out that the deportations of Venezuelans to El Salvador this year was supposedly necessary because it was depicted as an attack on America by members of the Tren de Aragua gang, although there was little evidence of such a planned incursion.

But the narrative of immigration as a foreign offensive has stuck — remember when “shithole countries” were supposedly purposefully emptying prisons and mental hospitals to send murderers and rapists to the U.S.?

And so many people accepted whatever erosion of rights these deportations meant in exchange for the perception of living in safer communities — never mind that the reality is that most of those now trapped in that Salvadoran prison are not violent criminals.

Success with that tactic has left the administration increasingly eager to capitalize on fearmongering and “looking for ways to use language like insurgency or emergency that frees it from from legal constraints,” Levitsky said. “And war is a great way to do it.”

Jones warned that even just stoking concerns that “there’s cells or there’s people on the inside” wishing to do us harm could be justification enough for more disintegration of rights.

Although all of that sounds dire, it’s important to remember that it hasn’t happened yet, and it may never happen. And if it does, it does not mean there’s no recourse to protect our civil rights — the people still have power.

“There isn’t a single strategy, a single slogan, a single movement, a single group, a single leader, a single protest,” Levitsky said. “There are literally 1,000 different ways for people to express their opposition to what’s going on, and what’s important is that Americans engage.”

Part of that engagement is accepting that democracy is not a given, and that American democracy holds no special powers to survive, he said.

“Frankly, that’s why we’re losing our democracy,” Levitsky said. “Brazilians don’t have this problem. South Koreans do not have this problem. … Germans don’t have this problem. People in Spain don’t have this problem. Chileans, Argentinians do not have this problem.

“All those societies have a collective memory of authoritarianism. All those societies know what it means to lose a democracy,” he said. “Americans don’t have an idea.”

Our greatest threat right now isn’t Trump or what he may or may not do. It’s our inability to believe that authoritarianism really is creeping up on us, that it could happen here.

And that all it might take is denial with a chaser of fear to topple a democracy that once felt unbreakable.

SEOUL — Since beginning his second term earlier this year, President Trump has spoken optimistically about restarting denuclearization talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whom he met for a series of historic summits in 2018 and 2019 that ended without a deal.

“I have a great relationship with Kim Jong Un, and we’ll see what happens, but certainly he’s a nuclear power,” he told reporters at an Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in March.

Earlier this month, Trump attempted to send a letter to Kim via North Korean diplomats in New York, only to be rebuffed, according to Seoul-based NK News. And now, following the U.S. military’s strike on three nuclear facilities in Iran on Sunday, the chances of Pyongyang returning to the bargaining table have become even slimmer.

For North Korea, which has conducted six nuclear tests over the years in the face of severe economic sanctions and international reprobation — and consequently has a far more advanced nuclear program than Iran — many analysts say the lesson from Sunday is clear: A working nuclear deterrent is the only guarantor of security.

“More than anything, the North Korean regime is probably thinking that they did well to dig in their heels to keep developing their nuclear program,” said Kim Dong-yup, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

A TV screen at the Seoul Railway Station shows the launch of a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile on Oct. 31.

(Lee Jin-man / Associated Press)

“I think this strike means the end of any sort of denuclearization talks or diplomatic solutions that the U.S. had in mind in the past,” he said. “I don’t think it’s simply a matter of worsened circumstances; I think the possibility has now gone close to zero.”

On Monday, North Korea’s foreign ministry condemned the U.S. strike on Iran as a violation of international law as well as “the territorial integrity and security interests of a sovereign state,” according to North Korean state media.

“The present situation of the Middle East, which is shaking the very basis of international peace and security, is the inevitable product of Israel’s reckless bravado as it advances its unilateral interests through ceaseless war moves and territorial expansion, and that of the Western-style free order which has so far tolerated and encouraged Israeli acts,” an unnamed ministry spokesperson said.

Trump has threatened to attack North Korea before.

Early in Trump’s first term, when Pyongyang successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the U.S. West Coast., administration officials reportedly considered launching a “bloody nose” strike — an attack on a nuclear site or military facility that is small enough to prevent escalation into full-blown war but severe enough to make a point.

“Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely,” Trump wrote on social media in August 2017.

While it is still uncertain how much damage U.S. stealth bombers inflicted on Iran’s nuclear sites at Natanz, Isfahan and Fordo — and whether they have kneecapped Iran’s nuclear program, as U.S. officials have claimed — experts say the feasibility of a similar attack against North Korea is much smaller.

“North Korea has been plowing through with their nuclear program for some time, so their security posture around their nuclear facilities is far more sophisticated than Iran,” Kim Dong-yup said. “Their facilities are extremely dispersed and well-disguised, which means it’s difficult to cripple their nuclear program, even if you were to successfully destroy the one or two sites that are known.”

Kim Dong-yup believes that North Korea’s enrichment facilities are much deeper than Iran’s and potentially beyond the range of the “bunker buster” bombs — officially known as the GBU-57 A/B — used Sunday. And unlike Iran, North Korea is believed to already have 40 to 50 nuclear warheads, making large-scale retaliation a very real possibility.

A preemptive strike against North Korea would also do irreparable damage to the U.S.-South Korea alliance and would likely also invite responses from China and, more significantly, Russia.

A mutual defense treaty signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un last June states that the two countries “shall immediately provide military and other assistance” to the other if it “falls into a state of war due to armed invasion from an individual or multiple states.”

Yet talk of such an attack in Trump’s first term was soon replaced by what he has described as a friendship with Kim Jong Un, built over the 2018-19 summits, the first ever such meetings by a sitting U.S. president. Though the talks fell apart over disagreements on what measures North Korea would take toward disarmament and Trump’s reluctance to offer sanctions relief, the summits ended on a surprisingly hopeful note, with the two leaders walking away as pen pals.

An undated photo provided on Sept. 13 by the North Korean government shows its leader, Kim Jong Un, center, visiting what the country says is a facility for nuclear materials in an undisclosed location in North Korea.

(Associated Press)

In recent months, administration officials have said that the president’s goal remains the same: completely denuclearizing North Korea.

But the attack on Iran has made those old sticking points — such as the U.S. negotiating team’s demand that North Korea submit a full list of its nuclear sites — even more onerous, said Lee Byong-chul, a nonproliferation expert who has served under two South Korean administrations.

“Kim Jong Un will only give up his nuclear weapons when, as the English expression goes, hell freezes over,” Lee said. “And that alone shuts the door on any possible deal.”

Still, Lee believes that North Korea may be willing to come back to the negotiating table for a freeze — though not a rollback — of its nuclear program.

“But from Trump’s perspective, that’s a retreat from the terms he presented at the [2019] Hanoi summit,” he said. “He would look like a fool to come back to sign a reduced deal.”

While some, like Kim Dong-yup, the professor, argue that North Korea has already proven itself capable of withstanding economic sanctions and will not overextend itself to have them removed, others point out that this is still the United States’ primary source of leverage — and that if Trump wants a deal, he will need to put it on the table.

“Real sanctions relief is still valuable,” Stephen Costello, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington-based think tank.

While he agrees that immediate denuclearization may be unrealistic, Costello has argued that even halting production of new fissile material, nuclear weapons and long-range missiles are “well worth ending nonmilitary sanctions,” such as those on energy imports or the export of textiles and seafood.

“Regardless of U.S. actions in the Middle East, the North Koreans would likely gauge any U.S. interest by how serious they are about early, immediate sanctions relief,” he said.

The attack on Iran will have other ramifications beyond Trump’s dealmaking with Kim Jong Un.

Military cooperation between North Korea and Iran, dating back to the 1980s and including arms transfers from North Korea to Iran, will likely accelerate.

Lee, the nonproliferation expert, said that the attack on Iran, which was the first real-world use of the United States’ bunker-buster bombs, may have been a boon to North Korea.

“It’s going to be a tremendous lesson for them,” he said. “Depending on what the total damage sustained is, North Korea will undoubtedly use that information to better conceal their own nuclear facilities.”

C-SPAN, the nonprofit outfit that has brought live gavel-to-gavel congressional coverage to cable TV viewers for decades, is feeling the squeeze faced by the rest of the TV business.

As consumers drop their traditional cable and satellite TV subscriptions for streaming platforms, C-SPAN’s main funding source is shrinking. The trend poses a threat to one of the rare media institutions that has bipartisan political support, including a fan in the Oval Office.

“It’s not a sustainable situation,” said C-SPAN Chief Executive Sam Feist said in an interview.

C-SPAN stands for Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, and therein lies the problem. The service is supported by cable and satellite operators who have seen their customer base steadily decline as consumers move to streaming platforms that now account for half of all TV viewing, according to recent data from Nielsen. C-SPAN, which reached around 100 million pay TV homes in 2015, is now down to 51 million households.

The contraction has led to a significant loss in revenue for C-SPAN, which has never sold advertising. C-SPAN took in $46.3 million in 2024, down 37% from $73 million in 2015, and is now running a deficit.

C-SPAN is not a glamorous TV operation. There are no high-priced anchors or slick studio sets. But it does need funding for the 30-plus camera crews that cover every moment the House and Senate are in session, think tank panels, town halls and other political events in Washington and around the country. C-SPAN uses its own cameras in the Capitol, enabling the service to catch the action when government-operated audio and visual equipment is cut off.

Feist said C-SPAN can fill its budget gap if companies that run smaller bundles of TV channels — such as Google’s YouTube TV and Walt Disney Co.’s Hulu Live TV — would agree to carry its feeds. Around 20 million households subscribe to such online subscription platforms, known as virtual multichannel video program distributors, which stream broadcast and cable channels.

It’s a big ask. Subscription streaming TV services are under pressure to keep their prices low so they can remain a cheaper alternative to a cable or satellite package. Every new channel increases the cost of a subscription.

C-SPAN is currently in discussions with Hulu and YouTube to get carriage.

“We are continuing to work with C-SPAN to find an approach that could support further access to their civic content,” a YouTube representative said. “We are proud that a large amount of C-SPAN’s content is available to viewers on the YouTube main platform, where it is accessible to everyone for free and generates advertising revenue for C-SPAN.”

C-SPAN was launched in 1979 when cable TV providers were looking to get in the good graces of local government officials who determined which companies would wire their communities.

Offering a civic-minded channel devoted to displaying democracy in action helped smooth the path for the pay TV industry’s expansion. C-SPAN went on to become a familiar brand that brought goodwill to cable and satellite companies, which have financed the service ever since.

But the C-SPAN legacy is not so meaningful to the upstart streaming services that have a growing number of customers who have never had a traditional pay TV subscription.

The stars of C-SPAN have started to weigh in. On June 2, the Senate passed a bipartisan resolution recognizing the anniversary of C-SPAN2, the channel devoted to the chamber’s sessions. The resolution said that live coverage of the proceedings needs to be accessible on all platforms.

C-SPAN also has support from the country’s most prominent TV viewer — President Trump. In recent months, Trump has posted on social media how he watches the channel in the overnight hours when highlights of the previous day, including his own press events, are presented.

While cable news channels such as CNN and MSNBC often dither over how much time they should devote to covering Trump’s rallies and public events, C-SPAN presents them in their entirety as a matter of course. The Trump White House communications office has praised the approach, which has remained consistent through all modern presidencies.

While some streaming outlets carry congressional proceedings, Feist notes that C-SPAN is still the only service that offers every event live over its three channels, even when they occur simultaneously. That was the case for the confirmations of FBI Director Kash Patel, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Feist, who is the former Washington bureau chief of CNN, said the neutral approach of C-SPAN has added value in a media environment where outlets now cater to the partisan leanings of their audiences. He cited an Ipsos poll that shows the political breakdown of its audience as 30% Democrat, 30% Republican and 36% independent.

“It matches the demographic of the country,” Feist said. “I think it puts us in a unique space in this ecosystem.”

This is intended as a personal appeal to a colleague and friend, Supreme Court nominee Stephen Breyer.

There are so many people who desperately need your understanding and compassion. The sad truth is that you are not only succeeding Harry Blackmun. You are the only potential successor to William Brennan, Thurgood Marshall, Earl Warren, William O. Douglas and the whole line of humanitarian justices who understood the importance of compassion and the need to do justice, not just administer law. There are lots of able technicians who understand law. The nation, however, is entitled to at least one justice with vision, with breadth, with idealism, with–to say the word despised in the Clinton Administration–a liberal philosophy and an expansive approach to jurisprudence. Someone must carry on the work of the court’s great progressive thinkers–the justices who ended de jure racial segregation, brought us one man/one vote, opened the courts to the poor and needy, established the right to counsel for all defendants, gave women true legal equality. It was progressive justices with a view of the Constitution as a living, breathing document who gave full measure to that instrument–not the legal technocrats, not those whose view of the Constitution was frozen as of 1789.

You have a wonderful opportunity and an awesome responsibility. You can be a narrow, cramped proceduralist like Felix Frankfurter, or you can seize the occasion and grow like a Warren, a Brennan, a Blackmun. You can be cold, purely intellectual and wholly technical, or you can become what the President said he was looking for–a justice who is compassionate, who has a big heart.

I hope you will re-examine your judicial philosophy. Everyone who goes on the court should. And when you emerge, I hope it will be to assume the mantle of the Brennan-Warren legacy. Otherwise, that voice will be silenced–perhaps permanently. How ironic if that would be the enduring consequence of electing a President supported so strongly by the poor, the needy, minorities of all kinds.

Anyway, I am most hopeful for the court and the country with you there. Perhaps I’m influenced by my personal feelings, but I believe that you will not let the spirit of liberalism be extinguished, that you will be a strong voice for a philosophy that now has no other means of expression. It simply cannot be otherwise–not after all that your spiritual predecessors have fought and struggled for, including the marvelous and caring justice for whom you clerked, Arthur Goldberg. You represent an awful lot of hopes, dreams and aspirations–a vision of a nation. For better or for worse, those who depend on the court to protect their fundamental rights must now look to you. You are their best and last hope.

As I listened to the minority leader of the Senate say, “He’s not as liberal as Blackmun,” and as I heard Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) express his joy over your selection, I thought of how important it is to have scruples and convictions and to stick by them. How I hope that those who disdain the expansive and humanitarian philosophy of the Warren / Brennan court have misread you.

Conservatives who fight for what they believe in deserve respect and admiration. It is hard to have those feelings for others who are easily intimidated, who fear controversy, who care only about compromise and consensus or their own success. There are plenty of centrists around.They now represent the left of the court. While I rarely agree with Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, I respect him. When he was appointed to the court, he was a lone voice for a judicial philosophy of the right. He was regularly on the short end of 8-1 votes, but he spoke for an important point of view and he almost single-handedly kept alive the principles in which he believed. They now dominate our judicial thinking. I don’t expect you to be that successful, but at least give us a voice.

The court has lots of intellect. While you will add to it, Justice Antonin Scalia represents abstract rationality well enough. But soul is important too. That is what makes greatness.

California leaders reached a tentative agreement Tuesday night on the state budget, which hinges on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s demand that the Legislature pass a housing reform proposal.

The eleventh-hour negotiations about the spending plan, which takes effect July 1, speak to the political challenge of overhauling longstanding environmental regulations to speed up housing construction in a state controlled by Democrats.

The party has been loath to do more than tweak the California Environmental Quality Act, or approve one-off exemptions, despite pressure from the governor and national criticism of a law that reform advocates say has hamstrung California’s ability to build.

The proposal is among a series of policies Newsom and Democratic lawmakers are expected to advance in the coming days as part of the $321.1-billion budget. The deal reflects the Legislature’s resistance to the governor’s proposed cuts to reduce a $12-billion budget deficit expected in the year ahead, citing uncertainty about the scope of the state’s financial problems.

“We appreciate the strong partnership with the Legislature in reaching this budget agreement,” said Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for Newsom. “The governor’s signature is contingent on finalizing legislation to cut red tape and unleash housing and infrastructure development across the state — to build more, faster.”

The consensus comes after weeks of conversations about how to offset the deficit, caused by overspending in California, and start to address even larger financial problems anticipated in the future, including from potential federal policy changes.

The tentative deal largely relies on borrowing money, tapping into state reserves, and shifting funding around to close the shortfall. By reducing and delaying many of the governor’s proposed cuts, the budget continues a practice at the state Capitol of sparing state programs from immediate pain while avoiding taking on California’s long-term budget woes.

Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher (R-Yuba City) said the budget deal papers over the state’s financial problems.

“We’re in this situation because of overspending,” Gallagher said. “We’ve made long-term commitments to programs that Democrats have championed, and now, just like everybody warned, the money is not there to support them all, and they don’t want to cut back their program that they helped expand.”

The cuts lawmakers and the governor ultimately agreed to will reduce the expansion of state-sponsored healthcare to undocumented immigrants and reinstate asset limit tests for Medi-Cal enrollees. The final deal, however, achieves less savings for the state than Newsom originally proposed.

The plan restores cost-of-living adjustments for child-care workers, which the governor wanted to nix, and rejects his call to cap overtime hours for in-home caregivers.

Democrats in the Legislature successfully pushed to provide another $500 million in funding for Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention grants. The governor originally resisted giving more money to counties, which he has chastised for being unable to show results for the billions of dollars in state funding they have received to reduce homelessness.

Assembly Budget Chair Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino) pushed back on the notion that the Legislature hasn’t done “real belt-tightening.” Lawmakers are trying to balance compassion and fiscal responsibility before making drastic cuts to safety net programs that Californians rely on, he said.

“That is the balance that we are trying to strike here with this budget of being responsible, of focusing on the work that we need to do regardless, but also understanding that there is a pretty high delta of uncertainty for a lot of reasons,” Gabriel said.

The budget also preserves Newsom’s plan to provide $750 million to expand the California Film and Television Tax Credit, a proposal supported by Hollywood film studios and unions representing workers in the industry.

The tentative agreement is expected to serve as a precursor to more challenging financial discussions about additional reductions in the months ahead.

California expects to lose federal funding from the Trump administration and state officials predict a potentially greater funding dilemma in 2026-27.

Here are few key elements of the budget deal, detailed in summaries of the agreement and legislation:

A housing caveat

Described colloquially as a “poison pill” inserted into the budget bill, the agreement between the Legislature and Newsom will only become law if legislators send the governor a version of a proposal initially introduced by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco).

Wiener’s bill is expected to lessen the number of building projects that would require a full environmental review under CEQA and make the process of developing environmental impact reports more efficient.

Paired with another proposal that could exempt more urban housing developments from CEQA, the legislation could mark a significant change in state policy that makes it easier to build.

Newsom is effectively forcing the Wiener proposal through by refusing to sign a budget deal without the CEQA exemptions. The proposal was still being drafted as of Tuesday evening.

The governor declared lofty goals to build more housing on the 2018 gubernatorial campaign trail, but he has failed to spur enough construction to meet housing demand and make homes more affordable.

New York Times columnist Ezra Klein effectively called out the inaction in California caused by the state’s marquee environmental law and a lack of political will in his recent book “Abundance,” which increased pressure on the governor and other Democrats to reconsider their approach and push for more substantial fixes this year.

The CEQA reform bill must be passed by Monday under the budget agreement, which omits a separate Newsom call to streamline the Delta tunnels project.

Changes to Med-Cal funding

Medi-Cal cost overruns are causing major problems for the California budget. The challenges stem from a higher-than-expected price tag for the expansion of state-sponsored healthcare to all income-eligible undocumented immigrants and medical care for other enrollees.

Newsom’s budget proposal in May suggested substantial trims to the healthcare program for people who are undocumented. His plan included freezing new enrollment as of Jan. 1, requiring all adults to pay $100 monthly premiums, eliminating long-term care benefits and cutting full dental coverage. The changes offered minor savings in the year ahead but could save billions of dollars in future years.

Lawmakers ultimately agreed to require undocumented immigrant adults ages 19 to 59 to pay $30 monthly premiums beginning July 2027. They plan to adopt Newsom’s enrollment cap but give people three months to reapply if their coverage lapses instead of immediately cutting off their eligibility.

Democrats agreed to cut full dental coverage for adult immigrants who are undocumented, but delayed the change until July 1, 2026.

State leaders agreed to reinstate much higher limits than the governor originally proposed on the assets Medi-Cal beneficiaries may possess and still get coverage. The new limits would be $130,000 for individuals and $195,00 for couples, compared to prior limits of a few thousand dollars.

They also adopted Newsom’s proposal to withdraw Medi-Cal benefits for specialty weight-loss drugs.

Shifting money around

The negotiations resulted in less general fund spending than the Legislature proposed in a counter to Newsom’s budget revision in May, dropping from $232 billion to an estimated $228 billion for 2025-26.

Officials are using more money from California’s cap-and-trade program, which sets limits on companies’ greenhouse gas emissions and allows them to buy pollution credits from the state, including $1 billion next year. They are also using $300 million from climate change bonds instead of the general fund to pay for environmental programs.

Lawmakers and the governor agreed to delay a $3.4-billion payment on a loan to cover Medi-Cal cost overruns and increase the loan by another $1 billion next year.

Trump uncertainty

The plan continues an agreement to take $7.1 billion from the state’s rainy day fund to help cover the deficit and taps into another $6.5 billion from other cash reserves to balance the budget.

California leaders for months have warned about the so-called Trump effect on the state budget.

Financial analysts at UCLA predict that the state economy is expected to slow in the months ahead due to the effects of Trump’s tariff policy and immigration raids on construction, hospitality, agriculture and other key sectors.

Meanwhile, the state is warning that federal funding reductions to California could require lawmakers to adopt additional budget cuts in August or September, during a special session in the fall or early next year.

State officials expect future deficit estimates to range from $17 to $24 billion annually, according to an Assembly summary of the budget deal.

More to come

The final budget agreement is being publicly released in bits and pieces this week through a series of trailer bills that appear online at random hours.

Lawmakers are expected to pass a main budget bill on Friday and approve additional legislation by Monday, before the July 1 deadline for the budget to go into effect. Some legislation, such as the CEQA housing exemptions, will not appear in print until the end of the week.

Other decisions, such as reauthorizing California’s cap-and-trade program, will be considered later in the year outside of the budget process.

A controversial proposal to sell off millions of acres of public lands across Western states — including large swaths of California — was stripped Monday from Republican’s tax and spending bill for violating Senate rules.

Senator Mike Lee (R–Utah) had advanced a mandate to sell up to 3.3 million acres of public land managed by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management for the stated purpose of addressing housing needs — an intent that opponents didn’t believe was guaranteed by the language in the provision.

Late Monday, Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian — who advises the government body on interpreting procedural rules — determined the proposal didn’t pass muster under the the Byrd Rule, which prevents the inclusion of provisions that are extraneous to the budget in a reconciliation bill.

The move initially appeared to scuttle Lee’s plan, which has drawn bipartisan backlash. But Lee, chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, took to the social media platform X to say the fight wasn’t over.

“Yes, the Byrd Rule limits what can go in the reconciliation bill, but I’m doing everything I can to support President Trump and move this forward,” Lee wrote in a post Monday night.

In the post, he outlined changes, including removing all Forest Service land and limiting eligible Bureau of Land Management land to an area within a radius of five miles of population centers. He wrote that housing prices are “crushing young families,” and suggested that his proposed changes would alleviate such economic barriers.

Utah’s Deseret News reported that Lee submitted a revised proposal with new restrictions on Tuesday morning.

Environmentalists and public land advocates celebrated MacDonough’s decision to reject Lee’s proposal, even as they braced for an ongoing battle.

“This is a significant win for public lands,” said Jennifer Rokala, executive director for Center for Western Priorities, in a statement. “Thankfully, the Senate parliamentarian has seen Senator Lee’s ridiculous attempt to sell off millions of acres of public lands for what it is — an ideological crusade against public lands, not a serious proposal to raise revenue for the federal government.”

Lydia Weiss, senior director of government relations for the Wilderness Society, a conservation nonprofit, described the rejection of the proposal as “deafening.”

“And the people across the West who raised their voices to reject the idea of public land sales don’t seem particularly interested in a revised bill,” she added. “They seem interested in this bad idea going away once and for all.”

The proposal, before it was nixed, would have made more than 16 million acres of land in California eligible for sale, according to the Wilderness Society.

Vulnerable areas included roadless stretches in the northern reaches of the Angeles National Forest, which offer recreation opportunities to millions of people living in the Los Angeles Basin and protects wildlife corridors, the group said. Other at-risk areas included portions of San Bernardino, Inyo and Cleveland national forests as well as BLM land in the Mojave Desert, such as Coyote Dry Lake Bed outside of Joshua Tree National Park.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — President Trump has a sleepover this week in the Netherlands that is, quite literally, fit for a king.

Trump is visiting The Hague for a summit of the 32 leaders of NATO on Wednesday, and his sleeping arrangements have received a significant upgrade.

He is scheduled to arrive Tuesday night and be whisked by motorcade along closed-off highways to the Huis Ten Bosch palace, nestled in a forest on the edge of The Hague, for a dinner with other alliance leaders hosted by Dutch King Willem-Alexander.

Trump had been expected to stay at a swanky hotel in the town of Noordwijk on the Dutch North Sea coast, but not anymore.

A spokesperson for the Dutch government information service, Anna Sophia Posthumus, told the Associated Press that the president will be sleeping at the palace that is home to Willem-Alexander, his Argentine-born wife, Queen Maxima, and their three daughters, though the princesses have mostly flown the royal nest to pursue studies.

Parts of Huis Ten Bosch palace date back to the 17th century. It has a Wassenaar Wing, where the royal family live, and a Hague Wing that is used by guests. The centerpiece of the palace is the ornate Orange Hall, named for the Dutch Royal House of Orange.

The palace is also close to the new U.S. Embassy in the Netherlands.

Trump is no stranger to royal visits. In 2019, he dropped in to Windsor Castle for tea with Queen Elizabeth II during a tumultuous visit to the United Kingdom.

Corder writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Molly Quell in The Hague and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.

Following the U.S. attack on Iran’s primary nuclear facilities at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan, Tehran faces nothing but bad options. Militarily, Iran can escalate the conflict by attacking U.S. forces and allies in the region, as it did on Monday with missile attacks on U.S. bases in Qatar and Iraq. Iran could also close the Strait of Hormuz, withdraw from the nuclear nonproliferation treaty or even attempt a rapid “breakout” run to a bomb with its residual capabilities. Each of these options virtually assures an American military response that goes far beyond Iran’s nuclear program, possibly leading to a targeted campaign to topple the regime, the Islamic Republic’s greatest nightmare.

A more likely military response would therefore be for Iran to respond by continuing to attack Israel — as it did just hours after the U.S. strike — in an attempt to turn the conflict into a war of attrition that Israel can ill afford. Israel could escalate to try to end the war more swiftly and avoid prolonging losses.

Diplomatically, Iran can return to negotiations but rebuff President Trump’s demand for an “unconditional surrender,” whose terms he had not spelled out. In reality, these would likely include the complete dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear and missile programs and significant curbs to its regional role, along with long-term inspections and more. Should Tehran rebuff these demands, it would greatly increase the risk of further American military action, including against the regime itself — targeting military and civilian leaders and infrastructure, not just nuclear sites.

Alternatively, it can essentially accede to Trump’s demands, in which case it avoids direct American intervention and the war ends, but Iran loses its ultimate security guarantor — the nuclear capability — and virtually all of its leverage to seek any concessions in further international talks. The regime would also appear so weak that the probability of a domestic uprising would increase exponentially.

Whichever option Iran chooses, the very future of the Islamic Republic has never been in greater peril. Accordingly, the prospects for a dramatic positive transformation of the Middle Eastern strategic landscape have never been greater.

The decades-long American effort to establish a regional coalition of Arab states and Israel, to contain Iran, will be given a significant boost, as the former gains confidence to do so in the face of a greatly weakened Iran and resurgent U.S. in the region. The dangers of proliferation, at least in the Middle East, might be greatly reduced. Israel will have demonstrated — albeit this time only with critical American assistance — that the “Begin doctrine” (Israeli determination to take all means necessary to prevent a hostile regional state from developing nuclear weapons) still applies. Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the three most likely proliferators in the region after Iran, will have little reason to pursue nuclear weapons.

Russia’s and China’s inability to provide their Iranian ally with any practical backing during the war stands in stark contrast to the U.S. and Israel and is particularly galling for Iran because of its strong support for the Kremlin during Russia’s war in Ukraine. Moscow and Beijing will suffer a significant reduction in their regional standing, accruing to Washington’s benefit. The Middle East will once again be considered a clearly American-dominated region, in which Russia and China will have to tread more carefully.

There are some in the U.S. who fear Mideast conflicts distract American attention from the competition with China — the only nation approaching the economic influence of the U.S. today — and Russia. But taking a direct role in this Iran-Israel conflict has not diverted American focus from Moscow and Beijing. On the contrary, it has significantly strengthened Washington’s global stature compared with both countries. China will be more hesitant to attack Taiwan now that the U.S. has demonstrated willingness to bomb aggressors against American allies.

An Israel whose enemies have been dramatically weakened, and which no longer faces an existential threat from Iran, would be in a far better position to make progress on the Palestinian issue, beginning with an end to the war in Gaza. Indeed, it would not be far-fetched to assume that Trump, always transactional, may have made this a precondition for his support for Israel in the war. Saudi-Israeli normalization will be back on the table.

Netanyahu has prepared for this moment for 30 years, for the opportunity to put an end to the only existential threat Israel continues to face. From the reviled leader whose administration allowed the Oct. 7 fiasco and various outrages in domestic affairs, he now stands to be remembered as one of Israel’s great heroes. Moreover, a favorable outcome to the war may very well save him from what otherwise appears to have been a looming electoral defeat — which could have been followed by jail time, given the corruption charges he faces.

The bigger question is whether Netanyahu — whose deep understanding of Israel’s overall strategic circumstances no one has ever doubted — will wish to use this opportunity to crown his legacy not just with saving Israel from an existential military threat, but also from an almost equally severe demographic challenge to its own future as a Jewish and democratic state. Fordo may be gone; the Palestinians remain. He would truly cement his standing in history if he ended the Gaza war and paved the way to a resolution of the Palestinian issue.

Both Netanyahu and Trump deserve credit for taking daring action, and they must be prepared to continue doing so. This is not the time to be fainthearted but to continue pressing the advantage. They have engaged in a classic case of coercive diplomacy, the use of military force for diplomatic ends, and must see it through to the desired end: a diplomatic agreement with Iran that ensures, with an inspections regime of unprecedented intrusiveness, that it can never again develop nuclear capabilities for military purposes, puts severe limits on its missile capabilities and curtails its malign regional role.

Even with a tentative cease-fire now in place, achieving an agreement of this sort will not be easy. The Iranians are unlikely to fully accede to American demands unless they truly feel that they have their backs to the wall, and even then, they are unusually effective negotiators. Persistence, focus and attention for detail, not known to be Trump’s forte, will now be called for. A historic opening has been made; it must not be squandered.

Chuck Freilich, a former Israeli deputy national security advisor, is a senior fellow at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. Colin P. Clarke is the director of research at the Soufan Group, a security and intelligence consulting firm based in New York City.

WASHINGTON — A top Justice Department official suggested the Trump administration might have to ignore court orders as it prepared to deport Venezuelan migrants it accused of being gang members, a fired department lawyer alleged in a whistleblower complaint made public Tuesday.

The whistleblower’s claims about Principal Assistant Deputy Atty. Gen. Emil Bove come a day before Bove is set to face lawmakers Wednesday for his confirmation hearing to become a federal appeals court judge.

In a letter seeking a congressional and Justice Department watchdog investigation, the former government lawyer, Erez Reuveni, alleges he was pushed out and publicly disparaged after resisting efforts to defy judges and make arguments in court that were false or had no legal basis.

The most explosive allegation in the letter from Reuveni’s lawyers centers on a Justice Department meeting in March concerning President Trump’s plans to invoke the Alien Enemies Act over what the president claimed was an invasion by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Reuveni says Bove raised the possibility that a court might block the deportations before they could happen. Reuveni claims Bove used a profanity, saying the department would need to consider telling the courts “f— you,” and “ignore any such order,” according to the filing.

“Mr. Reuveni was stunned by Bove’s statement because, to Mr. Reuveni’s knowledge, no one in DOJ leadership — in any Administration — had ever suggested the Department of Justice could blatantly ignore court orders, especially with” an expletive, the filing says. In the weeks after the meeting, Reuveni says he raised concerns in several cases about efforts to violate court orders through “lack of candor, deliberate delay and disinformation.”

Reuveni’s claims were first reported Tuesday by the New York Times.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche called the allegations “utterly false,” saying that he was at the March meeting and “at no time did anyone suggest a court order should not be followed.”

“Planting a false hit piece the day before a confirmation hearing is something we have come to expect from the media, but it does not mean it should be tolerated,” Blanche wrote in a post on X.

Reuveni had been promoted under the Trump administration to serve as acting deputy director of the Office of Immigration Litigation after working for the Justice Department for nearly 15 years under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Reuveni’s firing came after he acknowledged in an April court hearing that a Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, should not have been deported to an El Salvador prison, and expressed frustration over a lack of information about the administration’s actions. After that hearing, Reuveni says, he refused to sign on to an appeal brief in Abrego Garcia’s case that included arguments that were “contrary to law, frivolous, and untrue.”

“The consequences of DOJ’s actions Mr. Reuveni reports have grave impacts not only for the safety of individuals removed from the country in violation of court orders, but also for the constitutional rights and protections of all persons — citizen and noncitizen alike — who are potential victims of flagrant deliberate disregard of due process and the rule of law by the agency charged with upholding it,” Reuveni’s lawyers wrote.

U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg in April found probable cause to hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt for violating his order to not deport anyone in its custody under the Alien Enemies Act. Boasberg had told the administration to turn around any planes that already headed to El Salvador, but that did not happen.

The administration has argued it did not violate any orders, saying the court decision didn’t apply to planes that had lready left U.S. airspace by the time Boasberg’s command came down.

Trump nominated Bove last month to fill a vacancy on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He was already expected to face tough questioning before the Senate Judiciary Committee given his role in some of the department’s most scrutinized actions since Trump’s return to the White House in January.

The top Democrat on the committee, Sen. Dick Durbin, said Tuesday that the allegations from Reuveni are part of a “broader pattern by President Trump and his allies to undermine the Justice Department’s commitment to the rule of law.”

“I want to thank Mr. Reuveni for exercising his right to speak up and bring accountability to Mr. Bove,” Durbin said in a statement. “And I implore my Senate Republican colleagues: do not turn a blind eye to the dire consequences of confirming Mr. Bove to a lifetime position as a circuit court judge.”

Democrats have raised alarm about several other actions by Bove, including his order to dismiss New York Mayor Eric Adams’ corruption case that led to the resignation of a top New York federal prosecutor and other senior Justice Department officials. Bove also accused FBI officials of “insubordination” for refusing to hand over the names of agents who investigated the U.S. Capitol riot, and ordered the firings of a group of prosecutors involved in the Jan. 6 criminal cases.

Richer writes for the Associated Press.

Citing successes other police departments across the country have seen using drones, the Los Angeles Police Commission said it would allow the LAPD to deploy unmanned aircraft on routine emergency calls.

The civilian oversight body approved an updated policy Tuesday allowing drones to be used in more situations, including “calls for service.” The new guidelines listed other scenarios for future drone use — “high-risk incident, investigative purpose, large-scale event, natural disaster” — and transferred their command from the Air Support Division to the Office of Special Operations.

Previously, the department’s nine drones were restricted to a narrow set of dangerous situations, most involving barricaded suspects or explosives.

LAPD Cmdr. Bryan Lium told commissioners the technology offers responding officers and their supervisors crucial, real-time information about what type of threats they might encounter while responding to an emergency.

Officials said there is strong community support for the expanding use of drones to combat crime — and offered reassurances that the new policy will not be used unconstitutionally.

Tuesday’s vote clears the way for a pilot program set to launch next month at four police divisions — Topanga, West L.A., Harbor and Central — spread across the department’s four geographical bureaus. The Commission asked the department to report back within six months on the program’s progress.

Commissioner Rasha Gerges Shields said the old policy was understandably “very restrictive” as the department was testing out what was then an unproven technology. But that left the LAPD “behind the times” as other agencies embraced she said.

The commissioner pointed to the city of Beverly Hills, where police have been quick to adapt cutting-edge surveillance technology. Sending out a drone ahead of officers could help prevent dangerous standoffs, informing responding officers whether a suspect is armed or not, according to Gerges Shields, who served on an internal work group that crafted the new policy.

Commissioner Teresa Sanchez Gordon turned a more skeptical eye to the issue, saying the new policy needed to protect the public. She asked whether there were clear guidelines for how and when the devices are deployed during mass demonstrations, such as the ones that have roiled Los Angeles in recent weeks.

“I guess I just want to make sure that the recording of these activities will not be used against individuals who are lawfully exercising their rights,” she said.

The updated drone policy allows for the monitoring of mass protests for safety reasons, but department officials stressed that it will not be used to track or monitor demonstrators who aren’t engaged in criminal activities.

Equipping the drones with weapons or pairing them with facial recognition software is still off-limits, officials said.

The footage captured by the drones will be also subject to periodic audits. The department said it plans to develop a web portal where members of the public will be able to track a drone’s flight path, as well as the date, time and location of its deployment — but won’t be able to watch the videos it records.

Critics remain skeptical about the promises of transparency, pointing to the department’s track record with surveillance technology while saying they fear police will deploy drones disproportionately against communities of color. Several opponents of the program spoke out at Tuesday’s meeting.

The devices vary in size (2.5-5 lbs) and can cover a distance of two miles in roughly two minutes, officials said.

Expanding the role of drones has been under consideration for years, but a public outcry over a series of high-profile burglaries on the city’s West Side sparked an increased push inside the department.

The drone expansion comes amid a broader debate over the effectiveness of the department’s helicopter program, which has been criticized for being too costly.

In adopting the new guidelines, the department is following in the lead of smaller neighboring agencies. In addition to Beverly Hills, Culver City and Chula Vista that have been using drones on patrol for years and have more permissive regulations.

LAPD Cmdr. Shannon Paulson said that new policy will give the department greater flexibility in deploying drones. For instance, she said, under the old policy, a drone could normally only be dispatched to a bomb threat by a deputy chief or above who was at the scene, which led to delays.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to set aside an effort to impeach President Trump on a sole charge of abuse of power after he launched military strikes on Iran without first seeking authorization from Congress.

The sudden action forced by a lone Democrat, Rep. Al Green of Texas, brought little debate and split his party. Most Democrats joined the Republican majority to table the measure for now. But dozens of Democrats backed Green’s effort. The tally was 344 to 79.

“I take no delight in what I’m doing,” Green said before the vote.

“I do this because no one person should have the power to take over 300 million people to war without consulting with the Congress of the United States of America,” he said. “I do this because I understand that the Constitution is going to be meaningful or it’s going to be meaningless.”

The effort, while not the first rumblings of actions to impeach Trump since he started his second term in January, shows the unease many Democrats have with his administration, particularly after the sudden attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, a risky incursion into Middle East affairs.

Trump earlier Tuesday lashed out in vulgar terms against another Democrat, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, for having suggested his military action against Iran was an impeachable offense.

House Democratic leadership was careful to not directly criticize Green, but also made clear that their focus was on other issues. Impeachment matters are typically considered a vote of conscience, without pressure from leadership to vote a certain way.

Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands), chair of the House Democratic caucus, said lawmakers will “represent their constituents and their communities.”

“At this time, at this moment, we are focusing on what this big, ugly bill is going to do,” he said about the big Trump tax breaks package making its way through Congress. “I think anything outside of that is a distraction because this is the most important thing that we can focus on.”

Trump was twice impeached by House Democrats during his first term, in 2019 over withholding funds to Ukraine as it faced military aggression from Russia, and in 2021 on the charge of inciting an insurrection after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by his supporters trying to stop Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential election victory.

In both of those impeachment cases, the Senate acquitted Trump of charges, allowing his return to the presidency this year.

Green, who had filed earlier articles of impeachment against the president this year, has been a consistent voice speaking out against Trump’s actions, which he warns is America’s slide toward authoritarianism.

The congressman told the AP earlier in the day that he wanted to force the vote to show that at least one member of Congress was watching the president’s action and working to keep the White House in check.

Mascaro and Freking write for the Associated Press. AP writer Joey Cappelletti contributed to this report.

The Trump administration must turn over a cache of documents, photos, internal reports and other evidence detailing the activities of the military in Southern California, a federal judge ruled Tuesday, handing a procedural victory to the state in its fight to rein in thousands of troops under the president’s command.

Ordering “expedited, limited discovery,” Senior District Judge Charles R. Breyer of the federal court in San Francisco also authorized California lawyers to depose key administration officials, and signaled he might review questions about how long troops remain under federal control.

The Department of Justice opposed the move, saying it had “no opportunity to respond.”

The ruling follows a stinging loss for the state in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last Thursday, when an appellate panel struck down Breyer’s temporary restraining order that would have returned control of the troops to California leaders.

Writing for the court, Judge Mark R. Bennett of Honolulu said the judiciary must broadly defer to the president to decide whether a “rebellion” was underway and if civilians protesting immigration agents had sufficiently hampered deportations to warrant an assist from the National Guard or the Marines.

Bennett wrote that the president has authority to take action under a statute that “authorizes federalization of the National Guard when ‘the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.’”

But neither court has yet opined on California’s other major claim: that by aiding immigration raids, troops under Trump’s command violated the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which forbids soldiers from enforcing civilian laws.

Shilpi Agarwal, legal director of the ACLU of Northern California, argued the White House is abusing the post-Civil War law — known in legal jargon as the PCA — by having soldiers support Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.

“There isn’t a dispute that what the National Guard is doing right now is prohibited by the PCA — legally it absolutely has to be,” said Agarwal. “Going out with ICE officers into the community and playing a role in individual ICE raids really feels like what the Posse Comitatus Act was designed to prohibit.”

In his June 12 order, Breyer wrote that charge was “premature,” saying that there was not yet sufficient evidence to weigh whether that law had been broken.

The 9th Circuit agreed.

“Although we hold that the President likely has authority to federalize the National Guard, nothing in our decision addresses the nature of the activities in which the federalized National Guard may engage,” Bennett wrote. “Before the district court, Plaintiffs argued that certain uses of the National Guard would violate the Posse Comitatus Act … We express no opinion on it.

Now, California has permission to compel that evidence from the government, as well as to depose figures including Ernesto Santacruz, Jr., the director of the ICE field office in L.A., and Maj. Gen. Niave F. Knell, who heads operations for the Army department in charge of “homeland defense.”

With few exceptions, such evidence would immediately become public, another win for Californians, Agarwal said.

“As the facts are further developed in this case, i think it will be come more abundantly clear to everyone how little this invocation of the National Guard was based on,” she said.

In its Monday briefing, the Trump administration argued that troops were “merely performing a protective function” not enforcing the law.

“Nothing in the preliminary injunction record plausibly supports a claim that the Guard and Marines are engaged in execution of federal laws rather than efforts to protect the personnel and property used in the execution of federal laws,” the Justice Department’s motion said.

The federal government also claimed even if troops were enforcing the law, that would not violate the Posse Comitatus Act — and if it did, the Northern District of California would have only limited authority to rule on it.

“Given the Ninth Circuit’s finding, it would be illogical to hold that, although the President can call up the National Guard when he is unable ‘with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States,’ the Guard, once federalized, is forbidden from ‘execut[ing] the laws,’” the motion said.

For Agarwal and other civil liberties experts, the next few weeks will be crucial.

“There’s this atmospheric Rubicon we have crossed when we say based on vandalism and people throwing things at cars, that can be justification for military roaming our streets,” the lawyer said. “There was more unrest when the Lakers won the Championship.”

WASHINGTON — A plan to sell more than 3,200 square miles of federal lands has been ruled out of Republicans’ big tax and spending cut bill after the Senate parliamentarian determined the proposal by Senate Energy Chairman Mike Lee would violate the chamber’s rules.

Lee, a Utah Republican, has proposed selling millions of acres of public lands in the West to states or other entities for use as housing or infrastructure. The plan would revive a longtime ambition of Western conservatives to cede lands to local control after a similar proposal failed in the House earlier this year.

The proposal received a mixed reception Monday from the governors of Western states. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, called it problematic in her state because of the close relationship residents have with public lands.

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, voiced qualified support.

“On a piece-by-piece basis where states have the opportunity to craft policies that make sense … we can actually allow for some responsible growth in areas with communities that are landlocked at this point,” he said at a news conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where the Western Governors’ Association was meeting.

Lee, in a post on X Monday night, said he would keep trying.

“Housing prices are crushing families and keeping young Americans from living where they grew up. We need to change that,’’ he wrote, adding that a revised plan would remove all U.S. Forest Service land from possible sale. Sales of sites controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management would be significantly reduced, Lee said, so that only land within 5 miles of population centers could be sold.

Environmental advocates celebrated the ruling late Monday by Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, but cautioned that Lee’s proposal was far from dead.

“This is a victory for the American public, who were loud and clear: Public lands belong in public hands, for current and future generations alike,’’ said Tracy Stone-Manning, president of The Wilderness Society. “Our public lands are not for sale.”

Carrie Besnette Hauser, president and CEO of the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, called the procedural ruling in the Senate “an important victory in the fight to protect America’s public lands from short-sighted proposals that would have undermined decades of bipartisan work to protect, steward and expand access to the places we all share.”

“But make no mistake: this threat is far from over,” Hauser added. “Efforts to dismantle our public lands continue, and we must remain vigilant as proposals now under consideration,” including plans to roll back the bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act and cut funding for land and water conservation, make their way through Congress, she said.

MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian, also ruled out a host of other Republican-led provisions Monday night, including construction of a mining road in Alaska and changes to speed permitting of oil and gas leases on federal lands.

While the parliamentarian’s rulings are advisory, they are rarely, if ever, ignored. Lawmakers are using a budget reconciliation process to bypass the Senate filibuster to pass President Trump’s tax-cut package by a self-imposed July Fourth deadline.

Lee’s plan revealed sharp disagreement among Republicans who support wholesale transfers of federal property to spur development and generate revenue, and other lawmakers who are staunchly opposed.

Land in 11 Western states from Alaska to New Mexico would be eligible for sale. Montana was carved out of the proposal after lawmakers there objected. In states such as Utah and Nevada, the government controls the vast majority of lands, protecting them from potential exploitation but hindering growth.

“Washington has proven time and again it can’t manage this land. This bill puts it in better hands,” Lee said in announcing the plan.

Housing advocates have cautioned that federal land is not universally suitable for affordable housing. Some of the parcels up for sale in Utah and Nevada under a House proposal were far from developed areas.

New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, the ranking Democrat on the energy committee, said Lee’s plan would exclude Americans from places where they fish, hunt and camp.

“I don’t think it’s clear that we would even get substantial housing as a result of this,” Heinrich said earlier this month. “What I know would happen is people would lose access to places they know and care about and that drive our Western economies.”

Daly writes for the Associated Press.

THE HAGUE — Aboard Air Force One over the Atlantic on Tuesday, President Trump turned his attention for a brief moment from the diplomatic victory he had brokered between Israel and Iran to one that has proven far more elusive.

“I’d like to see a deal with Russia,” Trump told reporters before arriving in the Netherlands for a NATO summit and referencing his private conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine. “Vladimir called me up. He said, ‘Can I help you with Iran?’ I said, no, I don’t need help with Iran. I need help with you.”

“I hope we’re going to be getting a deal done with Russia,” Trump added. “It’s a shame.”

It was a rare expression of frustration from Trump with Putin at a critical time in Moscow’s war against Ukraine, and as Ukrainian leaders and their allies in Europe desperately seek assurances from Trump that U.S. assistance for Kyiv will continue.

The president will be at the summit in The Hague through Wednesday, where he is expected to meet with leaders from across Europe, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “Now we’re going to NATO — we’ll get a new set of problems,” Trump said of the meetings. “We’ll solve a new set of problems.”

The European bloc hopes to leverage Trump’s jubilation over the outcome of Israel’s war with Iran — which saw its nuclear program neutered and much of its military leadership and air defenses eliminated — into a diplomatic success for itself, European officials told The Times. After ordering U.S. precision strikes against three of Iran’s main nuclear facilities over the weekend to assist the Israeli campaign, Trump announced a ceasefire in the conflict on Monday that has tentatively held.

“The message will be that deterrence works,” one European official said. The hope, the official added, is that Trump will feel emboldened to take a more aggressive stance toward Russia after succeeding in his strategic gamble in the Middle East.

In The Hague, discussions among NATO and European officials have focused on Russia’s timetable for reconstituting its land army, with the most aggressive analyses estimating that Moscow could be in a position to launch another full-scale attempt to take over Ukraine — or a NATO member state — by 2027.

In a text message sent to Trump, screenshots of which he posted to social media, NATO Secretary Gen. Mark Rutte fawned over the president’s “decisive action” to bomb Iran, a decision he called “truly extraordinary.”

“Donald, you have driven us to a really, really important moment for America and Europe, and the world,” Rutte wrote. “You will achieve something NO American president in decades could get done.”

Rutte was referencing a new commitment by members of the alliance to spend 5% of their gross domestic product on defense, a significant increase that has been a priority for Trump since his first term in office.

The matter is not fully settled, with Spain resisting the new spending commitment. “There’s a problem with Spain, “ Trump told reporters on the plane, “which is very unfair to the rest of the people.”

But the new funding — “BIG” money, as Rutte put it — could help appease a president who has repeatedly expressed skepticism of the NATO alliance.

As he spoke with reporters, Trump questioned whether Article 5 of the NATO charter, which states that an attack on one member is an attack on all, in fact requires the United States to come to the defense of its allies.

“There are numerous definitions of Article 5, [but] I’m committed to being their friends,” he added. “I’ve become friends with many of those leaders, and I’m committed to helping them.”

Trump has failed thus far to persuade Putin to agree to a ceasefire against Ukraine despite applying pressure to both sides — particularly against Kyiv, which Trump has incorrectly blamed for starting the war.

In the Dnipro region of Ukraine on Tuesday, 160 people were injured and 11 were killed in a ballistic missile strike by Moscow, Zelensky wrote on social media.

“Russia cannot produce ballistic missiles without components from other countries,” Zelensky said. “Russia cannot manufacture hundreds of other types of weapons without the parts, equipment and expertise that this deranged regime in Moscow does not possess on its own. That is why it is so important to minimize the schemes that connect Russia with its accomplices. There must also be a significant strengthening of sanctions against Russia.”

Assuming a similar strategy to the Europeans, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said in an interview on Sunday that Congress should act to enable Trump with leverage against Putin in upcoming negotiations.

“How does this affect Russia?” Graham responded on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” when asked about the war with Iran. “I’ve got 84 co-sponsors for a Russian sanctions bill that is an economic bunker-buster against China, India and Russia for Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.”

“I think that bill’s going to pass,” he added. “We’re going to give the president a waiver. It will be a tool in Trump’s toolbox to bring Putin to the table.”

NEW YORK — New York City on Tuesday closed the arrival center for immigrants it had established at the Roosevelt Hotel, a once-grand Manhattan hotel that had become an emblem of the city’s fraught efforts to manage the flood of new migrants when it opened two years ago.

The midtown hotel, located blocks from Grand Central Terminal, served as the first stop for tens of thousands of immigrants arriving in the city seeking free shelter and services, with migrant families lining up and sometimes even sleeping on the street outside the hotel waiting for a bed.

Monday was the center’s last full day in operation, and the hotel was vacant as of Tuesday afternoon, according to Mayor Eric Adams’ office. Services provided at the Roosevelt, including registration, legal assistance and medical care, are now being offered to immigrants at other shelter locations, the office said.

Adams announced the city was winding down its operation at the Roosevelt and other migrant shelters in February as the surge of immigration from the U.S. border with Mexico waned.

The city is currently housing more than 37,000 migrants across 170 sites, down from a peak of nearly 70,000 last January, officials said Tuesday. During the height of the migrant wave, New York saw an average of 4,000 arrivals a week. That’s now down to less than 100 new immigrants in the week that ended June 22, according to Adams’ office.

The number of new immigrants has steadily dropped in large part to stricter immigration measures imposed during the end of former President Biden’s administration as well as a broader immigration crackdown since President Trump took office in January.

The Adams administration also placed limits on how long immigrants could remain in shelters run by the city, which is legally obligated to provide temporary housing to anyone who asks.

More than 237,000 asylum seekers have arrived in New York since April 2022, with more than 173,000 of them registered at the Roosevelt, city officials have said.

In recent months, the hotel became a prime target for the Trump administration, which claimed the Roosevelt was a hotbed for gang activity. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, citing those concerns, clawed back $80 million meant to reimburse the city for costs related to housing immigrants.

The future of the storied hotel, which the city had leased from its longtime owners, Pakistan’s government-owned airline, remains unclear. Representatives for the property didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday.

The Roosevelt opened in 1924 and has more than 1,000 rooms. In its heyday, the hotel was known for its in-house band, which was led by jazz great Guy Lombardo. It also served as New York Gov. Thomas Dewey’s election-night headquarters during his failed 1948 presidential campaign.

Marcelo writes for the Associated Press.

After a short and successful war with Iraq, President George H.W. Bush claimed in 1991 that “the ghosts of Vietnam have been laid to rest beneath the sands of the Arabian desert.” Bush was referring to what was commonly called the “Vietnam syndrome.” The idea was that the Vietnam War had so scarred the American psyche that we forever lost confidence in American power.

The elder President Bush was partially right. The first Iraq war was certainly popular. And his successor, President Clinton, used American power — in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere — with the general approval of the media and the public.

But when the younger Bush, Clinton’s successor, launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Vietnam syndrome came back with a vengeance. Barely three weeks after the U.S. attacked Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2002, famed New York Times correspondent R.W. Apple penned a piece headlined “A Military Quagmire Remembered: Afghanistan as Vietnam.”

“Like an unwelcome specter from an unhappy past,” Apple wrote, “the ominous word ‘quagmire’ has begun to haunt conversations among government officials and students of foreign policy, both here and abroad.”

“Could Afghanistan become another Vietnam?” he rhetorically asked. “Echoes of Vietnam are unavoidable,” he asserted.

Over the next 12 months, the newspaper ran nearly 300 articles with the words “Vietnam” and “Afghanistan” in them. The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times ran articles mentioning Iraq and Vietnam at an average rate of more than twice a day (I looked it up 20 years ago).

The tragic irony is that President George W. Bush did what his father couldn’t: He exorcised the specter of “another Vietnam” — but he also replaced it with the specter of “another Iraq.”

That’s what’s echoing in the reaction to President Trump’s decision to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. We’re all familiar with cliches about generals fighting the last war, but journalists and politicians have the same habit of cramming the square peg of current events into the round hole of previous conflicts.

Trump’s decision to bomb Iran — which I broadly support, with caveats — is fair game for criticism and concern. But the Iraq syndrome cosplay misleads more than instructs. For starters, no one is proposing “boots on the ground,” never mind “occupation” or “nation-building.”

The debate over whether George W. Bush lied us into war over the issue of weapons of mass destruction is more tendentious than the conventional wisdom on the left and right would have you believe. But it’s also irrelevant. No serious observer disputes that Iran has been pursuing a nuclear weapon for decades. The only live question is, or was: How close is Iran to having one?

Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, told Congress in March — preposterously in my opinion — that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.” On Sunday, “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker asked Vice President JD Vance, “So, why launch this strike now? Has the intelligence changed, Mr. Vice President?”

It’s a good question. But it’s not a sound basis for insinuating that another Republican president is again using faulty intelligence to get us into a war — just like Iraq.

The squabbling over whether this was a “preemptive” rather than “preventative” attack misses the point. America would be justified in attacking Iran even if Gabbard was right. Why? Because Iran has been committing acts of war against America, and Israel, for decades, mostly through terrorist proxies it created, trained, funded and directed for that purpose. In 1983, Hezbollah militants blew up the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon, killing 63. Later that year, it blew up the U.S. Marine barracks, also in Beirut, killing 241 Americans. In the decades since, Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies have orchestrated or attempted the murder of Americans repeatedly, including during the Iraq war. It even authorized the assassination of President Trump, according to Joe Biden’s Justice Department.

These are acts of war that would justify a response even if Iran had no interest in a nuclear weapon. But the fanatical regime — whose supporters routinely chant “Death to America!” — is pursuing a nuclear weapon.

For years, the argument for not taking out that program has rested largely on the fact that it would be too difficult. The facilities are too hardened, Iran’s proxies are too powerful.

That is the intelligence that has changed. Israel crushed Hezbollah and Hamas militants and eliminated much of Iran’s air defense system. What once seemed like a daunting assault on a Death Star turned into a layup by comparison.

None of this means that things cannot get worse or that Trump’s decision won’t end up being regrettable. But whatever that scenario looks like, it won’t look much like what happened in Iraq, except for those unwilling to see it any other way.

@JonahDispatch