Nightmare at LaGuardia. Oil Price Drops as Trump Announces Bombing Delay. Good Hitler Analogy: Bunker Time for Iran Leaders? Late Mail-in Ballots. And More
Airport Nightmare is the lead story at the New York Post early this morning. A Canadian regional jet collided Sunday night with a Port Authority fire truck at New York’s LaGuardia Airport.
The pilot and copilot were killed and dozens injured after the nose of the plane was sheered off. LaGuardia will be closed until at least 2 pm today. Air traffic control audio has been obtained:
Air traffic control audio obtained by the outlet showed that the rescue truck had been cleared to cross Runway 4 at taxiway D — though the tower controller can be heard repeatedly yelling at “Truck 1” to stop before dispatching more ARFF units to the scene.
The truck had been responding to a separate incident when the collision occurred, police said.
Air traffic controllers frantically ordered the truck to stop just moments before the smash.
Photos captured the ARFF truck completely mangled and toppled onto its side, as well as the obliterated front of the aircraft.
Our attention was already focused on turmoil at the nation’s airports as the Trump administration scrambled to deploy ICE agents at airports as lines mounted. The reason airport passenger lines are almost unbearable is the Department of Homeland Security shutdown that leaves TSA agents unpaid.
An editorial in the Washington Post says that sending ICE agents to help at airports is not as good an idea as resolving the shutdown, while an editorial in the New York Post praises President Trump for “foiling Dems ICE insanity” with ICE agents at airports. DHS employees have worked unpaid for more than half the current fiscal year. “It’s Not Safe for Anyone’: A TSA Officer on Working Without Pay” at The Free Press states the obvious; it further argues that “Congress needs to fund frontline workers like me before there is a tragic security failure.” Here are some people who—weirdly—continue to receive paychecks.
President Trump announced on Truth Social that the U.S. will postpone strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure and power plants pending talks with Tehran. Oil prices skidded and Dow futures jumped as a result. Iran fired long range missiles at Diego Garcia (largest island in Chagos archipelago) 2,500 miles away, alarming Europe because of the range.
We hear a lot about the U.S. lacking an off ramp in the Iran conflict. But maybe this is backwards? “Forget Trump’s Flailing — Iran’s the One without an Endgame” is a headline at Asia Times. (Thanks to RCP for spotting this.) The Asia Times:
Ayatollah Khamenei talked tough at the start of this war, threatening the US with a “strong punch.” A message, purportedly by his son and successor Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not been seen in public since his elevation, rejected any talk of de-escalation and avowed to bring the US and Israel to “their knees.” …
This sounds like bluster. Neither Israel nor the US nor even other countries in the region have suffered casualties and damage anywhere near that suffered by Iran, and unlike Iran, their leadership remains intact.
Meanwhile, Matthew Continetti is on about how President Trump hasn’t roused the pubic by communicating that American ideals and American interests are one. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tells NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the Iranian leadership already has reached the “Hitler’s bunker” stage, and Seth Cropsey writes at the WSJ that U.S. credibility is on the line in Iran and leaving the job incomplete would be catastrophic.
Just for the record, this isn’t the first time the Strait of Hormuz has bollixed international commerce. Empires have battled over it for centuries. Another narrow passage: A feature story in the Wall Street Journal describes Iranians fleeing the bombing through a narrow mountain pass to Turkey that has become “one of their few lifelines to the outside world.”
It Depends on What the Meaning of “Election” Is. The Supreme Court today is scheduled to consider the matter of late-arriving mail in ballots:
In a case with potentially major ramifications for the 2026 midterm elections and all federal elections going forward, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday will consider a Republican Party bid to prevent states from counting mail-in ballots received after Election Day even if they were postmarked on or before.
Thirty states plus D.C. and several U.S. territories have laws allowing tabulation of some late-arriving ballots provided that they were timely cast and received within a specified post-election timeframe, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The case before the justices centers on Mississippi’s acceptance of absentee ballots up to five days after Election Day so long as they were received by the Postal Service on or before.
The Republican National Committee, which brought the lawsuit, alleges the policy violates federal law establishing the Tuesday after the first Monday in November as the day for election of members of the House, Senate, and presidential electors, in specified years.
Republicans argue that the term “election” means both “ballot submission and receipt” and that Congress intended that it be completed on a single day.
Election day is set by federal law, a Wall Street Journal editorial observed a few days ago, asking if that doesn’t apply to absentee ballots too:
Absentee voting is occasionally a necessity, and in modest numbers it isn’t a difficulty, but widespread mail ballots and lax deadlines have introduced slack into the election system. Calling races in California can take nearly a month, and at some point control of Congress could depend on its dreadfully slow tallying.
Opposing that transformation of American elections doesn’t require buying into President Trump’s wildest fraud claims, and it needn’t be partisan, since Monday’s case pits the Republican Party against GOP-leaning Mississippi. If the Justices rule that federal law means the ballot box is shut on Election Day, it won’t fix all of this. But it would be a start.
More Election News. “California’s Trump Derangement May Elect Eric Swalwell [as Governor]” is the headline on Allysia Finley’s column this morning:
Gov. Gavin Newsom blames every problem under California’s sun, from wildfires to high energy prices, on President Trump—and he may be right in one respect. The neurologic antipathy that liberals feel toward Mr. Trump may supercede all other issues when they cast their ballots. Hatred is blinding.
If you think Mr. Trump is a mortal threat to the republic, vagrants shooting up at a neighborhood park seem less menacing. …
Trump derangement syndrome helps explain why Bay Area Rep. Eric Swalwell has become the favorite in the race to succeed Mr. Newsom this November. In California’s June 2 jungle primary, all candidates compete on the same ballot, and the top two finishers face off in November.
Former FBI Director Robert Mueller, who led the Trump-Russia investigation, which made him a hero among Trump-haters, has died. A piece in the Wall Street Journal praises many aspects of Mueller’s distinguished career, but has an elegiac ending:
The Russian collusion fiasco was one of the great political frauds in U.S. history. It’s a shame Mueller’s long record of service was marred by ill-judged decisions made in this era of acrimony and confusion.
It’s easy to understand why President Trump could loath Robert Mueller. But …. “Stay Classy, Don” is National Review’s Jeffrey Blehar’s take on the President’s (in my opinion) unfortunate remark on Mueller’s death:
I am less concerned with Donald Trump’s manifest incapacity for grace than with those who reflexively adopt it as their new moral philosophy as well. MAGA once defended Trump’s intemperate bleats by saying, “Well, he may be crass and vicious and degrade the overall discourse, but I support what he’s doing.” That was actually a reasonably defensible logic. But over time — inevitably with extended exposure, perhaps — that logic has been replaced by imitative affect: Trump is vulgar and petty, his top lieutenants are vulgar and petty: Let’s all be vulgar and petty now.
Former intelligence official Joe Kent, who very publicly resigned, is very much alive. So, no problem, as the kids say, with Rich Lowry’s “Joe Kent Is a Loon.”
