When I was a kid, my mother told me the story of King Canute. Now, the actual story is that the king’s advisors kept flattering him and telling him that he could command anyone (and anything) in his kingdom, and he was trying to teach them a lesson by showing them otherwise. But often the story gets repeated that the king himself was delusional and thought he was capable of commanding anything. Either way, the bulk of the story is about the king going down to the ocean and commanding the waves to stop. Which, of course, they don’t. And then, depending on which version of the story you’re getting, either the advisors feel foolish and chastened, or the king gets a lesson in humility. Now, I honestly can’t recall which version my mother told to me as a child, but it was the delusional king version that sprang to my mind when I heard about Trump saying that Israel was not going to drop any more bombs on Iran. As The Guardian explained:
After a phone conversation with Netanyahu, Trump returned to the platform [Truth Social] to announce: “ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran. All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly ‘Plane Wave’ to Iran. Nobody will be hurt, the Ceasefire is in effect!”
Minutes later, explosions were reported by Iranian media around Tehran and in the north of the country.
Because, yeah, dude: the waves are not going to stop for you. Dumbass.
The best explainer videos on the Iran situation I’ve seen are Seth Meyer’s A Closer Look segment early in the week, and then the Even More News crew’s take from mid-week. If you prefer to learn about whether or not Trump’s actions were legal (spoiler alert: they were not), try Legal Eagle, where Spencer will explain the whole thing for you in quite entertaining fashion.
And, because we live in the worst timeline, there were not one but two emergency episodes from Strict Scrutiny this week. The thing that is always the most frustrating to me about the Supreme Court is that they do things now that they obviously would never do if there was a Democrat in the White House. In some cases, things that they literally already refused to do when Biden was President. But no point listening to me blather on it about it: Kate, Melissa, and Leah explain it so much better than I ever could. They cover the decision against Planned Parenthood on Thursday and the decision limiting nationwide injunctions on Friday. And also a few thoughts on how Amy Coney Barrett is not the moderate that many (including me, back in Week -4) had opined she might b
BUT! I’m actually going to leave you with two pieces of hope this week. First of all, remember the first person Trump’s regime disappeared for having opinions? I know it’s difficult, as there have been so many by this point, but cast your mind back to Week 8, and the disappearing of Mahmoud Khalil. ICE agents kidnapped him right in front of his 8-months-pregnant wife and renditioned him from New York to Louisiana. And they’ve kept him there for the intervening fifteen weeks, even refusing his request to attend the birth of his first child. But, this week, finally, a judge ordered him released. The wheels of justice move ever so slowly, but they do move.
And the second piece of hope? The Democratic primary for mayor of New York City was won this week, not by former governor (and current sex pest) Andrew Cuomo, despite spending nearly $25 million dollars and gaining the backing of many high-level Democratic leaders who really should have known better. No, the Democratic primary was won by a self-described Democratic Socialist, a man born in Africa of Indian and Indian-American parents, a man who, should he win the general election, will be the city’s first South Asian mayor, first Muslim mayor, and youngest mayor in over a century: Zohran Mamdani. And there’s a very good chance he will win the genera
Reich: They’re worried about somebody like AOC, or, you know, Mamdani, or Bernie Sanders for that matter— anybody who actually is talking about what’s happened to the economy and wh y—
Lofthouse: And who refuses to take corporate dollars and who is supremely authentic—
Reich: And who wants to raise taxes on big corporations and the wealthy in order to pay for what people need instead of doing the opposite, which is what Trump is doing ... So obviously corporate Democrats are worried. Good.
Lofthouse: Good.
And, I have to tell you: any time the leaders of both sides hate a candidate, you can bet your ass that that’s a candidate of the people. Check out Zeteo’s announcement of Mamdani’s win for some trenchant analysis.
So we may be well on our way to an actually progressive mayor of New York, one who believes in providing free services to its residents and favoring people interests over corporate interests. And, after some of the mayors they’ve had to suffer through up till no