Letters from an American - June 26, 2025

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

Get full access to Letters from an American at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

June 26, 2025. This morning's press conference with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth featured an apparently angry Hegseth yelling at the media for contradicting President Donald Trump's claim that last weekend's strikes against Iran had completely obliterated its nuclear weapons program. Hegseth seemed to be performing for an audience of one as he insisted on the made-for-television narrative the administration has been pushing. He said, President Trump directed the most complex

and secretive military operation in history, and it was a resounding success, resulting in a ceasefire agreement and the end of the 12-day war. D-Day, the June 6, 1944 Allied invasion of France, took a year of planning, involved 156,000 Allied soldiers and 195,700 naval personnel and required cooperation of leaders from 13 countries. It remains the largest seaborne invasion in history. After a Senate briefing on the strikes, Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat of Connecticut, told reporters, to me, it appears that we have only set back

the Iranian nuclear program by a handful of months. There's no doubt there was damage done to the program, but the allegations that we have obliterated their program just don't seem to stand up to reason. I just do not think the president was telling the truth when he said this program was obliterated. Julian E. Barnes and David E. Sanger of the New York Times reported today that it remains unclear where Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium is. This afternoon, Zachary Cohen,

Alaina Treene, Kylie Atwood, and Jennifer Hansler of CNN reported that the administration has been engaged in secret talks to ease sanctions on Iran, free up $6 billion in Iranian funds currently in foreign banks, and help Iran access as much as $30 billion to build a nuclear energy program, all in exchange for Iran freezing its nuclear enrichment program. Trump ran his 2016 campaign in part by attacking President Barack Obama for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, which was a much more stringent deal than the ones suggested in the CNN article.

But there is perhaps a different angle to this deal than the Obama administrations. The idea of building nuclear power plants in the Middle East was central to Trump's 2016 bid for office. Members of Trump's inner circle, including Michael Flynn and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, hatched a plan for a joint U.S.-Russian project to build nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia. In June 2016, they formed a company called IP3 International, short for International Peace, Power, and Prosperity.

The focus of the Trump administration on the concentration of wealth and power among the very richest people in the world is creating a backlash at home. Sahil Kapoor of NBC News noted on Monday that polls show voters oppose the Republicans' budget reconciliation bill by large margins. A Fox News poll released June 13th showed that only 38% of registered voters support the budget reconciliation bill that benefits the wealthiest Americans, while 59% oppose it. Independents oppose the bill by a margin of 22% in favor to 73% against, and white men without a college degree, Trump's base, oppose the bill by 43% to 53%. That negative polling holds across a number of polls.

The Republicans are trying to pass their entire wish list in one giant package under budget reconciliation because in that form it cannot be filibustered in the Senate, meaning the tiny Republican majority there would be enough to pass it. Because budget reconciliation is one of the only forms of legislation that can't be filibustered. Republicans have thrown into this measure a wide range of things they want. The bill contains an extension of Trump's 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations,

as well as cuts to Medicaid, to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and to energy credits designed to help Americans switch to sustainable energy. It also contains a number of policies designed to shape America as MAGA Republicans wish. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that the measure the House passed will increase the national debt by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years. But the Senate has a nonpartisan officer known as the Senate Parliamentarian who interprets

Senate rules and procedures and tries to keep measures within them. Senators can ignore the Senate Parliamentarian if they wish, but that is rare. The current Senate Parliamentarian, Elizabeth McDonough, has held the office since 2012. She has judged that many of the things Republicans have crammed into the bill do not qualify for inclusion in a budget reconciliation bill. This may be a relief for some Republicans, who did not want to have to vote on unpopular provisions, but will cause trouble in the conference as McDonough said today that some of the measures Republicans counted on to save money, including

big pieces of the Medicaid cuts, do not fit in a budget reconciliation bill. Republicans had counted on those cuts to save the government $250 billion, thus helping to justify further tax cuts. Some Republican senators have called for overruling McDonough, but today Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican of South Dakota, said the Senate would not take that approach, instead looking at ways to fix the measure so it would be within the parameters necessary for a budget reconciliation bill. The Senate hoped to begin voting on its version of the bill tomorrow in order to pass the bill by July 4th as Trump has demanded. One of the reasons for the hurry is that the administration has

significantly overspent the budget for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration and customs enforcement. The agency could run out of money by July, three months before the end of the fiscal year, potentially breaking the Anti-Deficiency Act that prohibits federal agencies from spending more federal funds than Congress has appropriated. The budget reconciliation bill provides about $75 billion in additional funding to ICE over the next five years. The bill's redistribution of wealth upward has made it enormously unpopular. In an era when, according to the anti-poverty charity Oxfam,

the richest 1% of the world's population has gained at least $6.5 trillion since 2015. And just as extreme exhibitions of wealth drew popular anger in the late 19th century Gilded Age, the wedding this weekend of billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and journalist Lauren Sanchez in Venice, Italy, which Reuters reports will cost between $46.5 million and $55.6 million, has drawn protests against oligarchy.

Images from that wedding party contrast sharply with video of activists in wheelchairs arrested at the Russell Senate office building on Wednesday hands zip-tied as they protested cuts to Medicaid in the budget reconciliation bill. At the same time the administration's overreach on migrant deportations has also galvanized opposition. A new Quinnipiac poll shows that 64% of registered voters support a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants. Only 31% want most of them deported. That percentage has swung nine points toward legalization since Trump took office. Trump is also underwater on immigration more generally, with 41% approving of his stance

and 57% disapproving. Nearly half of registered voters, 49%, said they do not think democracy is working in the United States, while 43% say it is. 60% of those who do not think it is working told Quinnipiac pollsters they blame Republicans, while 15% blamed Democrats. 20% said they blame both parties. Voters in New York City showed their frustration

with politics as usual on Tuesday, when they elected 33-year-old New York State Assemblyman Zoran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist, to be the Democratic nominee for New York City Mayor. Mamdani promised to address the cost of living, to raise taxes on the rich, and to stop masked ICE agents from deporting our neighbors.

Mamdani's promise to change the political status quo echoes the one Trump used to win in 2016. But this time around, Trump is part of the status quo being challenged. On Wednesday, Trump called Mom Donnie a 100% communist lunatic who looks terrible. Representative Andy Ogles, a Republican of Tennessee, who has falsely described himself as an economist and misrepresented his education as well as his work experience, and who has been under investigation for campaign finance irregularities, referred to Mamdani in a social media post as Little Muhammad, calling him an anti-Semitic socialist,

communist, who will destroy the great city of New York. Ogles asked the Department of Justice to denaturalize and deport Mamdani, saying a line in a rap song Mamdani performed showed material support for terrorism. Mamdani, who is Muslim, was born in Uganda to Indian-born Ugandan political scientist Mahmoud Mamdani, who is now a professor at Columbia University, and filmmaker Miraner. Mondani became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2018. The Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee called Ogles's post racist drivel

and noted that Ogles faked a $320,000 campaign loan, lied about being an economist, and was fired from a law enforcement job for not showing up. Former Illinois Republican Congressman Joe Walsh was more direct. Over Ogles's post, he commented, a sitting member of Congress Congress calling for an American citizen to be stripped of his citizenship and deported, all because of that American citizen's political views. This is fascism. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, dead in Massachusetts, recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.