Hey everyone. Welcome back.
Our top story today: after months of war and growing pressure to end it, the President signed his Iran deal at the Palace of Versailles. He’s calling it historic. His own party is calling it a giveaway.
We’ll also cover Georgia’s redistricting retreat, updates on Trump’s Greenland obsession, a DOJ watchdog who won’t call January 6th an attack, and Jeff Bezos trashing his own newspaper at dinner with Trump.
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Okay, let’s get to it.
1. Trump Signs His Iran Deal at Versailles. His Own Party Is Already Bailing.
On Wednesday night, in the middle of a dinner with Macron at the Palace of Versailles, Donald Trump put his signature on the memorandum of understanding with Iran. “It’s signed,” he told reporters on his way out. “Signed in Versailles. Just signed it.”
The deal looks almost exactly like what had been leaking out all week. And it’s really bad.
The U.S. lifts its sanctions on Iran. The U.S. ends its naval blockade. Iran reopens the Strait of Hormuz, but only for 60 days, and then we negotiate with Oman over who runs it after that. And buried in the text: the U.S. “undertakes” to help line up a $300 billion reconstruction fund to rebuild Iran. 300 billion dollars to rebuild the country we were literally just bombing.
Now, let me take you back to 2013. Here’s Donald Trump, on Twitter, going after the Obama administration’s Iran deal:
Unfortunately for Trump, that’s exactly what the deal is this time. Except even “bigger” cash.
But Trump and his allies are working overtime to spin the loss, calling it historic, calling it peace. It doesn’t seem to be working too well, as Republicans in Congress seem to be turning on the White House.
Even Ted Cruz, who almost never crosses this President, says Trump is getting “very poor advice on this deal.” Thom Tillis added up the bill for the war and said anyone calling this a great deal just doesn’t have the full picture.
Over and over again we have seen Republicans defend this White House on things that are indefensible. Deep down they know it’s wrong but they keep doing it anyway. They are scared of Trump. So when they actually turn on him, that tells you how bad things really are.
2. Georgia GOP Backs Off Its Own Redistricting Fight
Governor Brian Kemp called Georgia lawmakers into a special session this week to redraw the state’s congressional and legislative maps. These new maps wouldn’t be for this November. They would be for 2028.
But hours before lawmakers gaveled in, Republicans decided they wouldn’t take it up. The official reasons were pending lawsuits and a desire to move carefully. And to do it with plenty of input from the public.
But let’s be honest, Georgia Republicans were worried about two things. They feared that openly cutting Black voting power would backfire and send Democratic turnout through the roof in the midterms. And they feared that redrawing the suburbs around Atlanta could hand Democrats seats they don’t hold today.
This move comes after this week’s Georgia runoff, where Democratic turnout beat Republican turnout for the first time since 2006. Democrats are showing up, and that means November is going to be close. That’s why redrawing the maps is so risky for Republicans. They would be putting their own seats in play by trying to grab more in 2028. This wasn’t a change of heart. It was a risk they couldn’t afford. At least not until after the midterms.
3. The Greenland Obsession That Never Went Away
This week, The New Yorker published an investigation that traces the President’s drive to buy the island from Denmark, a weird obsession that started in his first term and, according to the reporting, has never actually gone away.
The piece describes the massive new American consulate in Greenland’s capital that locals fear is headquarters for annexation. And European allies who quietly moved a small force into place to deter a possible American grab.
Now, listen to what Trump said while leaving the G7 yesterday.
We have no idea what’s going on in the president’s head here, not that we ever do at this point. But Greenland isn’t for sale. Denmark has said no, the people of Greenland have said no, and they are a NATO ally. Which means under Article 5 we are sworn to defend them.
But the president is still hyperfixated on “acquiring” Greenland. And he posts about it often. Look at this AI image he posted in May:
This is the President of the United States. Posting AI cartoons about taking land from an ally. And I know it’s easy to laugh it off. Just Trump being Trump, posting weird stuff online again.
But at this point, are we really confident we aren’t going to wake up one morning to the news that he’s actually trying to “take” Greenland? I hope we don’t. But he’s weirdly obsessed with this. And let’s be real, he just does stuff. Whatever he wants, whenever he wants. So it’s really not that crazy to imagine.
4. Trump's DOJ Watchdog Won't Call January 6th an Attack
The DOJ’s inspector general is supposed to look at what our country’s most powerful law enforcement agency is doing and tell the truth about it, no matter who is in charge. But when asked a simple question about the events of January 6th, look at how Trump’s nominee responded:
I was there on January 6th. I served on the committee that investigated that day, and watched hours and hours of footage that I will carry for the rest of my life. For any government official to reduce it to “activity outside the Capitol” is an insult to the eyes and ears of millions of Americans who witnessed exactly what happened. And is a betrayal of the incredibly brave Capitol Police officers who put their lives on the line to defend our democracy.
While Todd Blanche uses the Justice Department to prosecute Trump’s enemies and shield his friends, this is who is supposed to be watching him. And in that hearing, he gave us a preview of how he plans to do that. He’s going to look the other way.
5. Bezos Trashed His Own Paper to Trump
More details are leaking from the upcoming book by New York Times journalists Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, this time describing a dinner between Donald Trump and Jeff Bezos in December of 2024. Bezos, of course, owns the Washington Post, the paper that once broke Watergate.
Over that dinner, Bezos called the Post his worst investment, telling Trump that “the people there are terrible. They don’t listen.” Trump responded by telling Bezos he had to “take better care” of the paper.
Weeks earlier, Bezos had personally killed the Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, as hundreds of thousands of readers canceled in protest. And this past February he cut a third of the paper’s staff, including all of its correspondents in the Middle East and Ukraine. Reporters who covered the wars this administration has to answer for, suddenly without a job.
So Bezos followed his orders, and a newsroom built to check the powerful quietly turned into another thing the President never has to worry about. And it leaves the rest of us asking who is still willing to do the work.
That’s the whole reason I do this. No corporate owners. No fear. I couldn’t care less what the President wants me to do. I’m certainly not having dinner with him. If people like Bezos won’t do their job, then we’ll have to do it for them.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a six-month Pentagon review of U.S. forces in Europe on Thursday, at a NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels. He also tore into European allies for refusing to let U.S. forces use their bases to strike Iran, calling that decision shameful. Hegseth says the review is meant to push Europe toward taking the lead on its own defense, what he’s calling “NATO 3.0.” The announcement follows the Pentagon’s decision last month to pull roughly 5,000 troops out of Germany, and comes after Trump threatened even deeper cuts following a public spat with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. NATO’s own secretary general pushed back on the framing, noting that European allies and Canada boosted defense spending by $90 billion last year, a 20 percent jump.
Ukraine launched its largest drone attack on Moscow since the war began, sending at least 194 drones at the Russian capital early Thursday morning. The strikes hit the Moscow oil refinery for the second time in a week, sparked fires across the city, and injured at least 17 people, including two children. President Volodymyr Zelensky called it a justified response to Russia’s strike on a UNESCO-listed monastery in Kyiv earlier this week. All of Moscow’s major airports briefly shut down, and Russia answered with its own barrage of missiles and drones into Ukraine. This is part of a broader Ukrainian campaign hammering Russian oil infrastructure, which Zelensky has framed as a way to force Moscow back to the table, and it lands right as Trump signals he may be getting more engaged in ending this war.
