Happy Wednesday, everybody. We’ve got a lot to cover.
Trump’s seventy-two-hour Iran whiplash is doing real damage to American credibility. The administration is trying to rebrand ICE on Truth Social while people die in its detention centers. A deadly virus is spreading on a cruise ship in the Atlantic and the U.S. is no longer at the table. Trump’s Commerce Secretary is being deposed today about his long relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. And five Indiana Republicans lost their seats last night for voting against the President.
Ok, let’s get to it.
1. We have to talk about the damage Donald Trump is doing to America’s credibility.
We have to start today by talking about what has happened in the Strait of Hormuz over the last seventy-two hours. Sunday, Trump launched “Project Freedom” to escort civilian ships through the Strait. Monday, he told Fox News that Iran would be “blown off the face of the Earth” if they got in the way. And here is Pete Hegseth on Tuesday morning:
By Tuesday evening, Trump paused the whole thing for “a short period of time.” But this morning, he’s back threatening Iran:
But this is much bigger than Iran. There is a moment in every negotiation when credibility is the only currency that matters. Not military hardware. Not sanctions. Just words backed by the demonstrated willingness to mean them. This week, the United States ran out of that currency.
Credibility isn’t some abstract term. Credibility is what allows a superpower to deter conflict without firing a shot. It is the accumulated weight of decades of follow-through. The understanding, by adversaries and allies alike, that American promises mean something.
When that credibility is spent, the cost is real. It is paid in military deployments that would otherwise be unnecessary. It is paid in diplomatic arrangements that collapse because of a trust deficit. It is paid in allies who quietly begin hedging their bets and accommodating our adversaries.
The credibility being destroyed right now took generations to build. And that should concern every American regardless of how they feel about this war, this administration, or this president. The words of the United States of America used to mean something. And that is being lost. And it will not come back easily.
2. Trump Wants to Rename ICE to “NICE.” Because When Your Policy Is Indefensible, You Reach for a New Logo.
President Trump posted a mock federal logo to Truth Social on Tuesday rebranding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as “NICE” — short for National Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The idea originated last September on Jesse Watters’ Fox show, when comedian Adam Carolla joked: “What if we rebranded it? Could you imagine Gavin Newsom railing against ‘NICE’?” A conservative X influencer revived it in March. Trump endorsed it on April 26 — “GREAT IDEA!!! DO IT” — and on Tuesday his team posted a finished logo featuring the bald eagle from the Great Seal of the United States.
The unseriousness goes all the way down. From a war that’s being run on Truth Social to an immigration agency that’s being rebranded on Truth Social. The instinct is the same: the policy is indefensible, so change the wrapper.
The agency has a track record, and it’s not a good one. People are being beaten and dying in its detention centers, federal agents have killed American citizens on American streets, and ICE plans to deport one million people this year. You don’t fix any of that with a new logo.
3. Rare Virus Spreads After Outbreak on a Cruise Ship Stranded in the Atlantic
The MV Hondius, an Antarctic expedition ship, will sail to Spain’s Canary Islands after a hantavirus outbreak killed three passengers and infected at least four others on board.
The Hondius left Argentina on April 1 with 147 people from 23 countries on a remote South Atlantic cruise. A 70-year-old Dutch passenger died on board April 11, his wife collapsed in a Johannesburg airport days later trying to fly home, and a German national has since become the third fatality. Three more sickened passengers and crew were airlifted off the ship Tuesday.
Hantavirus is rodent-borne and rare in humans, but it’s also one of the more dangerous respiratory viruses on the books. There is no specific treatment, the case fatality rate runs as high as 38 percent, and many patients end up on ventilators. The WHO’s working assumption is that this is the Andes strain, which is the only hantavirus known to spread person to person.
There is currently no plan for disembarking the remaining crew and passengers, with the ship’s operator considering sailing to Spain. Contact tracing is underway across multiple countries and the WHO is coordinating an international response — but with an incubation window of up to eight weeks, passengers who’ve already left the ship are the variable nobody can fully account for yet.
If Andes virus and human-to-human transmission are confirmed, this becomes a serious international public health problem. And a reminder that the United States is no longer part of any of this:
That’s Trump pulling the United States out of the World Health Organization on Day One of his second term. The next outbreak might not move at the speed of a ship. It might move at the speed of a plane. And when it does, we will not be in the room when the response is coordinated.
4. Trump’s Commerce Secretary’s Long Relationship With Epstein Examined in Congress Today
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick appeared before the House Oversight Committee today for a closed-door deposition about his long relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Lutnick has long claimed he cut off contact with Epstein in 2005, but the files tell a different story. They show the two were still business partners as recently as 2014, and that in December 2012 Lutnick brought his wife, his children, and the family’s nannies to lunch on Epstein’s private Caribbean island. A 2013 email from Epstein’s accountant attached a “resume of Lutnick nanny” and arranged a meeting.
Here’s Lutnick in February when he was asked why he visited Epstein’s island:
The deposition is closed-door but transcribed, so a partial transcript will likely surface. But we’ve already seen lawmakers who were in the room come out and say that Lutnick was changing his story and appearing to cover his tracks. Here’s Rep. Ro Khanna, who sits on the Oversight Committee:
Right off the bat it seems like the deposition didn’t go well, as Khanna and other Congressional Democrats accuse Lutnick of lying to the committee. Pay attention to the fallout of the testimony, because Trump fired the last cabinet official who handled the Epstein issue badly.
5. Trump’s Revenge: Five Republican State Senators Ousted for Voting Against Redistricting
At least five of the seven Indiana Republican state senators who blocked Trump’s redistricting push in December lost their primaries last night to Trump-endorsed challengers.
The defeated incumbents were veteran legislators who said in December they were following the will of their constituents when they voted down a Trump-backed map designed to add two GOP seats. Only one targeted incumbent, Greg Goode, survived. The seventh race is too close to call.
The lesson from Tuesday is the one every Republican legislator in America was meant to learn. Crossing Trump on a single vote is now a career-ending decision, and the political infrastructure to enforce that exists in any state where Trump-aligned groups want to show up. Republican-led states across the South are about to vote on new congressional maps, and the message out of Indianapolis is that voting no is no longer survivable.
Spencer Deery, one of the Indiana incumbents fighting for his seat, went on CNN last night:
Trump may have won these state legislative primaries, but he is facing a cratering approval rating, a war with Iran that is spinning out of control, and an economy that is flashing warning lights to anyone paying attention. These victories confirm his grip on the GOP base, but do little to fix his larger political problems. Or the problems of everyday Americans.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
Pastors Say They Were Secretly Briefed That UFO Disclosure Will Upend the Bible. A group of evangelical pastors is claiming that U.S. intelligence officials secretly briefed them at an Airbnb in the Tennessee mountains and warned them to prepare their congregations for an upcoming government UFO disclosure that could undermine the biblical creation story. Tennessee evangelist Perry Stone, Bishop Alan DiDio, and podcaster Tony Merkel have all spoken publicly about the meeting in the past two weeks, framing the disclosure as part of the “great deception” prophesied in Revelation. The broader policy backdrop is real. Trump ordered Pete Hegseth to release the government’s UAP files on February 19, and Vice President JD Vance said in March he believes UFOs are “demons, not aliens.” Trump told a Turning Point USA event last month the first releases would come “very, very soon.” And look, I’m in favor of UAP transparency. But real disclosure comes from sworn testimony in front of Congress. Not from end-times pastors recapping what they heard at an Airbnb.
Obama Goes on Colbert and Names the Two Things the Country Can’t Survive. In an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that aired Tuesday night, former President Barack Obama warned that the United States can survive bad policy and funky elections but cannot survive a politicized Justice Department and a politicized military. He didn’t name Trump, but he didn’t have to.
The interview was filmed at the new Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, which opens to the public on Juneteenth, and aired in one of the final episodes of The Late Show, which CBS canceled last July, days after Colbert criticized Trump. And look, Obama is saying plainly what every former president and most sitting senators already know. Politicizing the DOJ and the military isn’t bad behavior. It’s the line between a republic and something else.
