New Yorker in DC

Someone trying to figure out how we ended up in the worst possible timeline. Affectionally referred to as "that guy."

[Gregory Brew @gbrew24]

"Everybody was pretty much on board, like, ‘yeah, let’s make this deal, let’s open the straits, and then let’s see where we are in a few months.'"

Sums it up: the deal was the best of limited options. Nobody believes the Iranians are going to follow through.

But the war had to end. So here we are. https://t.co/Yq7kJGIwQt

[New Yorker in DC @NYkrinDC]

The Republican party has been completely taken over by insurrectionists traitors and some conservatives will claim that it's "Democrats" who elect the ideologues or the ones trying to cheat. It's up is down. Left is right idiocy.

[Marc E. Elias @marceelias]

🚨BREAKING: Billionaire Rick Jackson, an election denier who has echoed President Donald Trump’s false claims about Georgia’s 2020 election, won the Republican runoff for governor. https://t.co/qfaNRjx3tw

[Marc E. Elias @marceelias]

🚨BREAKING: Billionaire Rick Jackson, an election denier who has echoed President Donald Trump’s false claims about Georgia’s 2020 election, won the Republican runoff for governor. https://t.co/qfaNRjx3tw

[Ali Ahmadi @AliR_Ahmadi]

They are too scared to criticize Trump, so now its "the Vance peace deal".

[Jessica Tarlov @JessicaTarlov]

Vice President Vance was on the show today to talk Iran.

The truth is simple: The leaked MOU lets Iran sell oil immediately, grants sanctions relief upfront, and dangles a $300 billion reconstruction fund before the hard nuclear issues are even negotiated.

Meanwhile, Iran keeps its program intact during a 60-day talks period. This deal shares language with the JCPOA and abandons Trump’s goals of the war.

[scary lawyerguy @scarylawyerguy]

Translation: The language in the deal is a complete fold by Trump but ignore it, just trust us it's not as bad as it looks.
Type up that spin Alayna, keep your future Paramount overlords happy that you're carrying water for Dear Leader.

[New Yorker in DC @NYkrinDC]

He was confirmed because Democrats couldn't bother to show up to prevent it.

[Jennifer Bendery @jbendery]

A thing getting lost in the shuffle around here is that the Senate just confirmed another of Trump's personal attorneys to a lifetime federal judgeship.

Justin Smith, 41, repped Trump in his presidential immunity case + E. Jean Carroll's sex abuse case. https://t.co/3exFzO2R10

[Mother Jones @MotherJones]

“This is the most corrupt administration not only in American history, but more corrupt than I could ever have imagined a president would be able to get away with to the extent that he has." https://t.co/tqFUStEzXz

[EU says Elon should not lie abt my blue check @emptywheel]

Nice of @SenatorHagerty to confess he has NO FUCKING idea what has been funded and what has not. ICE has been sitting on WADS of cash, Senator. It's what you did with the healthcare money.

[Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias]

Pro-Israel groups deliberately turned Israel into a polarized issue and alienated almost the whole Democratic Party for the sake of a war that turned out to be as disastrous as Obama warned them and is going to end up with a deal that’s worse for them than JCPOA was.

[Dave DeCamp @DecampDave]

The White House group chat when the US knocked down an apartment building in Yemen

[Headquarters @HQNewsNow]

Mike Collins, the new Republican Senate candidate for Georgia:

—Praised college students making monkey gestures and noises at a Black woman
—Employed a chief of staff who was in a white nationalist group chat
—Denies the results of the 2020 election
—Has been the subject of a House Ethics committee investigation

[The Shallow State @OurShallowState]

This is fascinating to me. Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill reports that midway through indirect talks to end the war, Tehran’s negotiating team added two senior psychologists to help craft messages to Trump. They were experts in the fields of cognitive impairment and anti-social behavior, and they were added to manage what an official described as "the American President’s psychopathic behavior pattern.” See follow-up tweet.

[Zachary Cohen @ZcohenCNN]

“Losing control of the strait will be the biggest blunder of this era because it is a card the US cannot counter without going all in,” a fourth source involved with the military planning for the war said. “Now there is no way to undo the strait without amassing a massive force.”

[The New Republic @newrepublic]

It’s unknown “whether these bonus payments have simply been a corrupt attempt to slide cash to friends or whether they are also meant to ensure the silence of the agents who witness your inebriation and accompanying professional negligence and misconduct.” https://t.co/hJyR1k0N87

[Joyce Alene @JoyceWhiteVance]

Some women at a Turning Point USA summit talked about relinquishing their right to vote to create a “more conservative” country. Here’s why we can’t afford to laugh it off as ridiculous.
https://t.co/3dtpBdcO5T

[Katie @KazooKatherine]

Wow! Raskin just sent Kash Patel this letter. It’s umm… interesting. Read it twice. 👀

The House Judiciary minority says Patel has handed out more than $1 million in “bonus” payments to agents on his Director’s Advisory Team and his security detail. The letter calls it a personal slush fund.

Here’s the mechanism. Federal pay is capped by statute. The letter alleges Patel routed money around that cap. Nearly $8,000 per agent, every two-week pay period. Some collected five in a row. Roughly $40,000 each.

Then the accounts ran dry. Raskin says some of the payments bounced.

Who got paid? The letter points to the unit NOTUS reported as the “Payback Squad.” And it ties the cash to silence, alleging agents were polygraphed over whether they helped cover up Patel’s drinking.

Now the other column. The agents he fired include an FBI Medal of Valor recipient, the official who led the Jan 6 law enforcement response, a Marine combat veteran cut weeks after his wife died of cancer, and a counterintelligence unit that tracked Iranian threats.

Reward the loyal. Purge the rest.

Raskin wants every bonus, every authorization, and every legal memo on whether this broke federal law. Deadline June 29.

[New Yorker in DC @NYkrinDC]

The spin is even more laughable, when you remember that Iran is unlikely to believe the US about much, given that the last time they were negotiating, we killed their leadership in a surprise attack.

[James Surowiecki @JamesSurowiecki]

So the new spin is that even if the actual text of the actual document is as bad it looks, the real secret deal is much much better. It's the "My girlfriend lives in Canada. You wouldn't know her" school of foreign policy.

[James Surowiecki @JamesSurowiecki]

So the new spin is that even if the actual text of the actual document is as bad it looks, the real secret deal is much much better. It's the "My girlfriend lives in Canada. You wouldn't know her" school of foreign policy.

[Neal Augenstein @AugensteinWTOP]

BREAKING, re: Kennedy Center: Judge orders Trump administration to explain by Friday its construction plans (the tarp is still up) and what it is doing to ensure that programming continues after July 5.