The U.S. and Iran are exchanging strikes for the first time since July. The U.S. struck first to prevent Iranian forces from launching rockets from Larak Island. The Washington Post reports:
U.S. forces struck Iranian launchers in the Strait of Hormuz, the first publicly acknowledged attack on Tehran’s forces in nearly a month as the Trump administration navigates a tenuous ceasefire.
Iranian forces were preparing to fire rockets from Larak Island, in the country’s south, that would have dispersed sea mines into the strait, said Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for Central Command.
U.S. forces in the region cleared long-lingering mines from shipping routes last week and “remain prepared to protect the free flow of commerce through this essential waterway,” Hawkins said.
Fighting flared in the Middle East:
Shortly after the strike, U.S. forces defended against missiles launched at Jordan, according to U.S. military officials. Jordan’s military said it successfully intercepted eight missiles that entered the country’s airspace.
Jordan hosts nearly 4,000 U.S. troops and is an important staging ground for U.S. military operations throughout the Middle East.
Larak is a small Iranian island in the Strait of Hormuz that has become a key military and shipping-control point for Tehran. The island is used by the Revolutionary Guards to monitor vessel traffic and sits in a strategic position overlooking the waterway, one of the world’s most important shipping routes.
Supply Concerns. Oil had jumped 3% by early this morning. Meanwhile, a Jewish Iranian refugee whose family fled the “butchers” of Iran 50 years ago, writes:
Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei and the rest of the regime leadership are not trying to beat the American military; they are trying to outlast the American taxpayer, and the regime is banking its survival on exactly that.
My family fled the butchers who stole my country nearly five decades ago, and I have spent every year since watching the world try to manage, contain and negotiate with them. The Iranian people are not our enemy; they are the regime’s first hostages. America proved in Operation Midnight Hammer what the most powerful military in human history can do, and it is our job to finish the job.
“Should You Believe the Dire Warnings About ‘AI Takeover’?” asks the headline on a Tyler Cowen Free Press story. “Shocking new details of the Hugging Face hack have experts claiming that ‘full-blown AI takeover’ could be months away. Tyler Cowen disagrees,” reveals the subtitle. In case you are hazy about “Hugging Face,” here is how Cowen begins:
It happened more than a month ago, but my chat groups are still buzzing about the rogue AI hacking attack by OpenAI research agents.
In case you missed the details or are curious why so many people are still talking about it, some of those agents were able to evade controls designed to keep them away from the internet and burrow into the systems of Hugging Face, a popular AI platform. The AI agents also covered their tracks. Some agents sacrificed themselves for the other agents. It took about three days for Hugging Face to detect that it had been hacked—and another week for the maker of ChatGPT to confirm that it was responsible for the escaped hackers.
AI might not be alone in going rogue. According to a bombshell report that was deleted but also obtained by a New York newspaper, a veteran prosecutor in the office of New York AG Tish James claims he was ordered to dig up dirt on people and groups “affiliated with Donald Trump”:
Former Brooklyn Prosecutor Daniel Wiesenfeld alleged in his email on Friday that Bureau Chief Shamiso Maswoswe specifically directed him to target “Trump himself, Truth Social, Hewlett Packard (DOJ approved merger)… without having a credible reason for targeting the organizations and individuals,” the outlet reported.
New York Post ace Miranda Devine responds with a column headlined “AG Letitia James turns evil eye on Trump — and blind eye to NY crime.” The story also made the cover of the New York Post: “Tish Witch Hunt.”
Maybe President Trump is Tish’s great white whale? Wall Street Journal columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady contends that Canada is President Trump’s great white whale:
Is President Trump secretly working for Canada’s Liberal Party? You could be forgiven for thinking so after the failure of trade talks with Ottawa sent support soaring for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s handling of the matter. If there’s one thing conservative Canadians dislike more than the sniveling lefties running their federal government, it’s the bombastic Mr. Trump.
On Thursday the U.S. president said he is changing the name of Lake Ontario in federal records to Lake America. That’ll show ’em who’s boss. But Canada has its own ideas about how to inflict pain …
The great English novelist Charles Dickens has a good lesson for us on how raising taxes on the rich can actually hurt the poor most of all. The Wall Street Journal’s Allysia Finley writes about how an 18th-century British levy targeted people of means and plunged the poor into darkness. In “Boutique Socialism and the DSA,” Kyle Smith asks, “Where are all the actual workers in this ‘working class’ political movement?” Smith writes. Do read Smith’s piece—you must meet the privileged commie, who asks, “but like have y’all never heard of noblesse oblige?”
What caused the socialist wave? Writing at Real Clear Politics, Mark Serrano proposes that it was the constant demonization of President Trump:
But here’s the problem with crying fascist non-stop for a decade: Your own voters start asking why you’re not acting like it’s real. Far-left podcaster Jennifer Welch labeled Schumer and Jeffries “fascist collaborators” for not fighting hard enough. Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Institute, criticized the left’s idol, Barack Obama, for sacrificing his “megaphone” during the second Trump term.
You cannot spend 10 years telling your base that democracy is one election from extinction and act surprised when they demand radical change. That radical change is the Democratic Socialists of America.
What do Dems and Republicans have in common? “Democrats want the midterms to be about Trump. He does, too,” is a WaPo headline. “As Republicans fight to hold Congress, Trump and his allies are spending money and political capital to keep him at the center of the campaign,” the WaPo declares. From the report:
“It’s going to be a Trumpapalooza you’re not gonna want to miss!” RNC Chairman Joe Gruters said in a social media video.
“The Political Violence Double Standard” is a terrific City Journal piece by John Tierney. “The left-wing kind is discounted; the right-wing kind is exaggerated,” argues Tierney. He writes:
These statistical games obscure a fundamental distinction. Mentally disturbed lone wolves appear on the fringes of both sides, but organized violence in pursuit of political goals is not a right-wing specialty; it is a left-wing one. Since the French Revolution, it has been a recurring strategy for movements seeking to gain and wield power. Yet the Left’s influence over legacy media and cultural institutions continues to sustain the myth that right-wing violence poses the greater public danger.
…
But the most alarming sight that weekend turned out to be at the state capitol in Lansing, Michigan, where hundreds of National Guard troops and police in riot gear, backed by armored vehicles, stood watch over 25 protesters, most of them members of the Boogaloo Bois, an antigovernment movement. The throng of 150 journalists photographed the ones with rifles but otherwise recorded nothing more exciting than a short statement by their leader, who displayed a Pride rainbow flag sticking out of his body armor as he declared peaceful solidarity with all groups protesting tyranny. In Lincoln, Nebraska, two lonely protesters stood outside the capitol. In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, reporters from around the world took turns interviewing the single protester.
Why didn’t the vast network of right-wing fanatics mobilize its troops? Because the network doesn’t exist. There’s no right-wing equivalent of Code Pink, Extinction Rebellion, the Democratic Socialists of America, and the rest of the Left’s protest-industrial complex. The professionals inhabiting that world have spent decades mastering the art of turning out crowds for the progressive cause du jour: Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, the Global Climate Strike, the Women’s March, Free Palestine, Abolish ICE, No Kings, No Data Centers, No Billionaires, and whatever banner the Omniprotest flies next.
