Wild Wednesday Reads

Good Afternoon!!

Yesterday was the Massachusetts primary and, as expected, 80-year-old Ed Markey defeated 47-year-old Seth Moulton in the contest for U.S. Senator nomination. I voted for Moulton, even though I agree more with Markey’s politics; because I really believe we need to get younger people into Congress. I knew Markey would win anyway. Our other Senator, Elizabeth Warren, is 77. Her term will not be up until 2031. Stephen Lynch, 71, also defeated a younger opponent for his House seat. I don’t have as much of a problem with that. His term is only 2 years. But we really need new blood in Congress–not to mention the White House!

Reid J. Epstein at The New York Times (gift link): Six Takeaways From the Massachusetts Primaries.

Massachusetts, as it turns out, is a good state in which to be a very old Democratic incumbent.

Three Democrats who have been in office since long before the iPhone was in stores all won renomination Tuesday. Senator Ed Markey, 80, and Representatives Richard Neal, 77, and Stephen F. Lynch, 71, are all likely to return for additional terms.

Ed Markey

Each faced challengers who had called for a new generation of leadership. Mr. Markey coasted past Representative Seth Moulton, 47, who ran to the middle, while Mr. Neal and Mr. Lynch both fought off progressive challengers.

Mr. Markey has been in office for 50 years. Mr. Neal has represented western Massachusetts since 1989. Mr. Lynch first won election from South Boston in 2001. The state’s Democrats do not seem inclined to reject their incumbents….

The party still scarred by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s public meltdown during the 2024 campaign was not convinced that an octogenarian senator should not serve another six years.

Seth Moulton

Perhaps if Mr. Markey, 80, had faced a younger challenger with better political relationships than Mr. Moulton, he would have been in trouble in Tuesday’s Democratic primary. But Mr. Moulton has spent his career challenging his party’s orthodoxy and its leaders.

That record left Mr. Markey the political space he needed to paint himself as the progressive in the race, campaigning on the ideas of the future — even though he has been in Congress for 50 years.

In the waning days of the Massachusetts primary, several Democrats described Mr. Moulton as having the generational change message the party needed but being the wrong messenger to deliver it.

Mr. Markey said throughout the campaign that he would resign his seat if his advanced age left him unable to properly fulfill his Senate duties. He is now favored to win in November, which would have him serve in the Senate until he is 86 years old.

Moulton also hurt himself with his remarks about trans athletes.

…from the moment Mr. Moulton entered the race last October, Mr. Markey used his remarks questioning transgender girls’ participation in girls’ sports as a battering ram against him. Not only did it galvanize the L.G.B.T.Q. vote for Mr. Markey, it also helped frame him as the progressive candidate.

It was the same formula that powered Mr. Markey’s last primary triumph in 2020 against another younger, more moderate Democrat, Joe Kennedy III.

Mr. Moulton eventually offered a qualified apology for his remarks, which came the day after President Trump won a second term in the 2024 election. But by then the state’s progressive voters had heard for months from Mr. Markey and his supporters that Mr. Moulton, during tough times, was willing to toss trans people aside.

Use the gift link to read more if you’re interested.

Rep. Stephen Lynch and Rep. Richard Neal also defeated younger opponents.

Ben Kamisar at NBC  News: Democratic Rep. Stephen Lynch defeats a younger challenger in Massachusetts primary.

Democratic Rep. Stephen Lynch has defeated a younger, more progressive primary challenger, NBC News projects, in the highest-profile test remaining for House incumbents after a turbulent primary season.

Stephen Lynch in 2025

Lynch, 71, won renomination over Patrick Roath, a 39-year-old former aide to former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. With his win, Lynch staved off an attempt to add him to the list of Democratic officeholders dethroned by rivals pushing for generational change.

Elsewhere in the state, fellow veteran Democratic Rep. Richard Neal also secured renomination, defeating teacher Jeromie Whalen in another Democratic primary.

On the other side of Massachusetts, Roath outraised Lynch, outspent him significantly on the airwaves and scored The Boston Globe editorial board’s endorsement to go with backing from Patrick, progressive activist David Hogg’s group, Leaders We Deserve, and key teachers unions.

That support helped Roath press Lynch for months in one of the toughest fights of his political career. He highlighted Lynch’s various breaks with his party in the past, including votes against the Affordable Care Act and, more recently, for the Laken Riley Act. Roath also called for progressive measures like “Medicare for All,” abolishing ICE and restricting military aid to Israel.

But Lynch persevered, trumpeting work that he says held the Trump administration accountable and leaning on his decades of experience, including deep relationships with unions and other fixtures in the district….

Richard Neal

Neal also avoided defeat in another primary marked by arguments over generational change and progressive policy proposals. Whalen, 39, a high school teacher, ran a campaign decrying the “old-school political entanglements that got us into this mess” and called to abolish ICE and cut off U.S. military aid to Israel.

Neal spent more than $1 million on campaign ads, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact, about 10 times what Whalen spent.

The U.S. and Iran traded attacks yesterday.

Yeganeh Torbati at The New York Times (gift link): U.S. and Iran Survey the Damage After a Night of Intense Strikes.

The United States and Iran exchanged a barrage of strikes overnight, an outburst of violence that killed both military personnel and civilians in Iran, including four people at a wedding, according to Iranian news media and officials.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees the military’s operations in the Middle East, said that it had struck Iranian military targets in retaliation for attacks on ships and American forces in the region.

Four members of the aerospace division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps were killed in a U.S. strike in the western city of Kermanshah, according to a Guards statement published on Wednesday by Tasnim, an Iranian news agency. At least 12 people were killed in strikes across Iran’s southern region, the Iranian state outlet Press TV reported on Wednesday.

A still from a video provided by the Iranian Red Crescent rescue service showed damage in Kuhestak, southern Iran, on Wednesday.Credit…Iranian Red Crescent Society, via Reuters

In response to the latest attacks, the Revolutionary Guards said in statements Wednesday morning that they had launched missiles overnight at an American military base in Jordan, at U.S. military equipment warehouses in Iraq and at an air base in Kuwait hosting American forces.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss operations, said Wednesday all American service members were accounted for but declined to share any damage assessments.

The deadly back-and-forth overnight was a demonstration of the stalemate between Washington and Tehran, more than six months after President Trump launched strikes on Iran, saying that he expected a quick resolution.

Among the locations hit by the U.S. military was a wedding in a residential area in the small port town of Kuhestak in the Hormozgan province of southern Iran, according to Iranian officials. Four people, including a child, were killed in the attack, with around 50 others wounded and hospitalized, Iranian state media reported.

Use the gift link to read more if you’re interested. The NYT now allows subscribers unlimited gift links.

David Rising and Samy Magdy at AP: Iran fires on its Gulf neighbors, retaliating for US strikes after a wedding was hit.

Iran fired on U.S. allies in the Gulf early Wednesday following a night of American bombardment that Iranian officials say included a deadly strike on a wedding party.

The latest violence came after a monthlong lull in fighting. The six-month war has led to a spike in oil prices, roiled the global economy and posed increasing political problems for U.S. President Donald Trump’s Republican Party ahead of November midterm elections.

Fighting has escalated since the American military hit Iranian rocket launchers on an island in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, saying Iran was planning to use them to shoot mines into the waterway. Iran retaliated by firing missiles at American bases in Jordan that were intercepted.

American military resources are stretched and political pressure in Washington is mounting, while Iran’s economy falters. Iran’s currency hit another record low on Wednesday, with traders in Tehran exchanging 2.20 million rials for one U.S. dollar, a 10% hike from last week’s record.

Neither side can continue indefinitely between full-scale war and a truce, said Hamidreza Azizi, senior Iran analyst at the Crisis Group, an international think tank.

“At some point, one of the sides may see a need to escalate in order to break this cycle,” he cautioned. “So that could bring the two sides to a point that they have been trying to avoid until now, which is a full-scale war.”

Trump made a bunch of insane threats on Truth Social, including that he would completely destroy Iran’s civilization. Then he suddenly switched gears and announced another cease fire.

Megan Brand and Sahil Kapur at NBC News: Trump announces 2-week Iran ceasefire after he’d warned ‘a whole civilization will die tonight.’

President Donald Trump announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran on Tuesday night — hours after he’d threatened “a whole civilization will die tonight” and about 90 minutes before a deadline he set for Tehran to reach an agreement with the United States.

“Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran, and subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks,” he wrote on Truth Social.

Earlier in the day, Trump had warned on social media that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if there was no deal between the two warring countries.

That threat, Trump’s most extreme public rhetoric in the conflict to date, had included a vow to launch attacks on Iran’s infrastructure over its continued disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

The two-week ceasefire, Trump said, is contingent upon Iran reopening the strait. For its part, Iran proposed a 10-point plan to end the war, which includes “controlled passage” through the strait, coordinated by Iran’s armed forces.

Iran’s plan also calls for compensation for damages and the withdrawal of U.S. forces from “all bases and positions in the region.” On social media, Trump called the plan “workable.” [….]

After he extended the deadline multiple times for Iran to reopen the vital shipping route, which about a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas usually passes through, Trump announced 8 p.m. ET Tuesday as the final deadline for Iran to come to a deal.

In a post Sunday, Trump threatened Iran’s power plants and bridges if it did not reopen the strait by the Tuesday deadline, using expletives and invoking Islam.

It was the latest in a series of escalating threats by Trump against Tehran, including threatening to bomb the country into “the Stone Ages” and calling the Iranian government “crazy bastards” while demanding that it open up the key shipping route.

Trump’s threat Tuesday morning sparked a wave of fierce and immediate condemnations from Democrats, who said such strikes on infrastructure would constitute war crimes.

Trump is psychotic and should be removed from office. He’s a danger to the U.S. and the world. He has completely out of touch with reality.

Check this out from Kevin Dietsch at CNBC: Trump floats renaming Strait of Hormuz the ‘Trump Strait.’

President Donald Trump on Wednesday floated renaming the Strait of Hormuz — the central point of contention in the ongoing war against Iran that the U.S. and Israel started — after himself.

The proposal via a Truth Social post came less than a week after Trump, who is locked in an intensifying feud with Canada, signed an executive order to change the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America.”

“Now that we have it under U.S.A. control, should we change the name Hormuz Strait to TRUMP STRAIT???” Trump wrote in the post Wednesday morning.

“Like America itself, it would be ‘hotter’ than ever before! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP,” he wrote.

It was not immediately clear how the president would attempt to implement a name change in the strait, which is not near the U.S. The order renaming Lake Ontario directed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and his department to update the Geographic Names Information System with the new name. Canada rejected the change, though Google and Apple have recently updated their maps. Early in his second presidential term, Trump also declared he was renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, a change also rejected by Mexico and other international counterparts. The U.S. borders Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico, both of which have had their names for centuries….

The Strait of Hormuz yestereday

Trump and his administration have repeatedly insisted that Iran has lost control over the strait, which carried one-fifth of the world’s oil trade before the war began in late February.

But transits through the waterway remain far below prewar levels, and ship-trackers say they have dropped further in recent days, as military strikes in the region have resumed following a weekslong hiatus.

Again, Trump lives in an alternate reality. He is insane and should be removed from office immediately.

Meanwhile, Pete Hegseth is destroying the Department of Defense.

Haley Britzky and  Zachary Cohen at CNN: Hegseth’s culture war fixation disrupting Army progress, sources say.

In the aftermath of the resignation of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, multiple sources told CNN they believe Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is damaging the Army’s efforts to adapt to the modern battlefield as he focuses on culture wars and prioritizing his own image of the “American warfighter,” and pushes out leaders who don’t align with his vision.

In submitting his resignation, a source familiar said Driscoll brought up “concerns with the administration surrounding Army transformation and readiness and Hegseth’s blocking those efforts specifically by firing the generals who were responsible.”

Driscoll announced Tuesday evening that Wednesday would be his “last full day in the role.”

Multiple sources agreed with the concerns Driscoll raised: that Hegseth is damaging the Army’s efforts to modernize and adapt to the 21st century battlefield environment – where drone warfare is becoming increasingly important – by firing or pushing out leaders who were spearheading those efforts.

“It’s critical that you have key leaders that understand technology and have the temperament to deal with industry and turn that into the formation,” a former senior Army official said. “When you fire these guys for arbitrary reasons, it creates confusion and a void … the Army is enduring turbulence right now.”

Senior US military officials have privately acknowledged they have come under what could be characterized as political pressure during Hegseth’s tenure ­— particularly when he has prioritized culture war issues — and voiced concerns about the secretary’s recent efforts to fire or push out uniformed and civilian leaders.

A defense official in Europe told CNN that even though Hegseth has spoken about technology reform and even previously released guidance on unmanned systems, in practice they see a secretary and Pentagon leadership more focused on cultural issues than modernization.

“It’s conflicting because yeah he put out a memo saying this is important, but … he’s talking about muscles, dudes in dresses, testosterone,” the official said. “We don’t see a change at that level.”

There’s much more at the CNN link.

Harry Thompson at The Daily Beast: Pentagon in ‘Disarray’ as Hegseth Faces Double Crisis.

Pete Hegseth is accused of setting the military up for potential disaster as the fallout of his ego-driven overhaul of top leadership spills into public view.

The 46-year-old former Fox News host has masterminded a massive purge within the Defense Department that saw Army Secretary Dan Driscoll walk out on Monday, raising fears about a lack of experienced leadership at the top of the military.

It comes as the Pentagon burns through resources—both material and human—in its fight with Iran, which has now dragged on for over six months despite President Trump initially projecting it to last four to five weeks.

Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll submitted his resignation to President Trump.Credit…Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

The fight is thought to be exacting a heavy toll on the nation’s weapons and munitions stockpiles, which the Center for Strategic and International Studies says will last for the war in Iran, but which pose a threat to the U.S.’s ability to fight future wars. The Associated Press, however, reports that the war has used around 65 percent of Patriot interceptor missiles.

Driscoll said he feared that Hegseth’s leadership of the Defense Department could cause “generational damage,” a person familiar with the close JD Vance ally told the Financial Times.

He “had tried so many different ways and so many different times, but it was just clear that… Hegseth wasn’t willing to listen to the facts or the truth, or the reason, or any of that, because of his personal animosity,” they said.

Reflecting on his exit, Brookings Institution senior fellow Tom Wright told the FT that it was a “revelatory moment, and I think it illustrates that the Pentagon is in disarray.”

Greg Jaffe, Helene Cooper, and Eric Schmitt at The New York Times (gift link): Hegseth Targets 7 More Officers as His Frustrated Army Secretary Quits.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired or blocked the promotions of more than 80 generals and admirals, a purge that has hit about 10 percent of the military’s top officers and shows no signs of slowing.

In recent days, Mr. Hegseth targeted seven Army officers who had been selected for two-star general rank by a board made up of senior Army leaders, according to current and former military officials, who discussed sensitive personnel matters on the condition of anonymity.

The moves come at a time when the military is badly strained by the Iran war, which has gone on far longer than administration officials anticipated.

Pete Hegseth

The military, especially the Army, is also racing to keep up with the proliferation of sophisticated drones and precision missiles that have exposed the vulnerability of its overseas bases and weapons systems.

The firings and Mr. Hegseth’s refusal to explain the logic behind them are dividing the Pentagon and alienating many in Congress, the officials said. The latest to register his disapproval was Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll, who recently submitted his resignation to Mr. Trump.

In a meeting with the president, Mr. Driscoll complained that Mr. Hegseth had fired some of the Army’s most combat-tested leaders, imperiling its efforts to modernize the force, military officials said.

He also warned Mr. Trump that the firings and blocked promotions have damaged morale, causing some in the military to question the fairness of a promotion system that is supposed to be apolitical and merit-based, senior officials said.

Mr. Hegseth’s purge does not appear to be driven by job performance, but rather is part of a broader effort by the defense secretary to fashion a force, particularly at senior levels, that is aligned with his political and ideological views, according to military officials.

Also his preference for white males.

Sean Parnell, the Pentagon spokesman, defended Mr. Hegseth’s decisions as normal Pentagon business. “The idea that these lists cannot be altered is ridiculous; every single secretary has exercised this exact prerogative,” he said.

But senior officials and members of Congress have said that Mr. Hegseth’s moves are without precedent. In the past, the defense secretary and service secretaries have removed officers for moral or ethical breaches. But officials said that these officers have behaved in accordance with Pentagon policy.

Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has called Mr. Hegseth’s removals “illegal.”

More than half of the officers affected by Mr. Hegseth’s dismissals are Black or female in a force whose senior ranks are dominated by white male officers. Of the seven officers Mr. Hegseth removed from the Army two-star promotion list, two are Black and two are female.

Use the gift link to read more if you wish.

Those are my recommended reads for today. Thoughts? What other stories are you following?