And so once more we’re at war. Central Command announced yesterday afternoon it had conducted “a series of powerful strikes against Iran to impose heavy costs for targeting and attacking commercial shipping crewed by innocent civilians in an international waterway. . . . a clear violation of the ceasefire.”
The reasons various parts of the administration provided for these strikes were stultifyingly stupid. One official told Axios’s Barak Ravid, “As President Trump and the administration have repeatedly affirmed, the MOU in effect with Iran is entirely performance-based. Iran will only reap benefits if they exhibit good behavior.” Another unnamed administration official told NewsHour correspondent Nick Schifrin that Iran has “clearly demonstrated they’re not listening. We’re turning up the volume.”
Usually when these anonymous quotes about more intense fighting appear, President Trump quickly tries to calm the markets. But in this case, even he seemed to concede that the ceasefire had ended, albeit while also inviting negotiations for a new ceasefire. From his remarks overnight:
To me, I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them anymore. They’re scum. You know what scum is? They’re scum. They’re sick people. They’re led by sick people. And they’re vicious, violent people. And if they had a nuclear weapon, they’d use it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over. I’ll speak to our negotiators. They want to negotiate. They’re good people. Steve Witkoff. Jared Kushner. But they have to come back to me. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a waste of time dealing with them. . . . There’s something wrong with them, they’re coo-coo. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over. . . . They can talk, but I think they’re wasting their time. They’re a bunch of lying guys.
One doesn’t have to read that many books to learn that bombs are remarkably inarticulate ways of sending messages, considering they always say the same thing and sometimes kill the people you want to receive the message. But if there were any administration that might actually be more articulate with high explosives than with words . . . Happy Wednesday.
Join Mark Hertling and Ben Parker for Command Post live at 10:30 a.m. EDT today on Substack and YouTube.
Did These Men Deserve to Die?
by William Kristol
“The cruelty is the point,” Adam Serwer memorably wrote eight years ago.1 That was during Donald Trump’s first term in office. In his second term, the cruelty remains the point. But it has now been institutionalized and routinized in key agencies of the federal government. Trump’s personal and performative indecency has become an entire administration’s sustained and systematic indecency.
Yesterday morning, NBC News reported on the sudden death earlier this year of an Afghan national in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal, 41, had fought for a decade alongside U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan. He was evacuated when U.S. troops pulled out in 2021 and entered the U.S. legally. He became a truck driver, worked at a market and bakery, and had requested asylum to remain here. That claim was pending when ICE seized him for deportation at his home in Richardson, Texas, on the morning of March 13, as he was getting his children ready for school.
Paktiawal died the next day in ICE custody. His death certificate says he died from “an adverse drug reaction” to an unidentified substance which triggered anaphylaxis and exacerbated his asthma, and his death was ruled an accident. We do know from his wife that he relied on an inhaler for asthma. We also know that ICE agents rejected her attempt to give them the device when he was taken into custody. We also know that Texas authorities have refused to release his autopsy report, arguing its disclosure would interfere with a pending criminal investigation.
Mohammed Nazeer Paktiawal was not a criminal. He was not here illegally. He was a threat to no one—except perhaps the Taliban. There was no reason for ICE to detain him—except to meet its arrest and deportation quotas. There is no reason for most of the fifty deaths in ICE detention during Trump’s second term except that the Trump administration is unsparing in pursuit of its mass deportation agenda, an agenda that is as irrational as it is cruel.
Soon after this NBC news report appeared, news broke of another death, this one yesterday morning, on the streets of Houston.
Here’s the Department of Homeland Security’s announcement of what happened:
On July 7, 2026, at approximately 6:50 AM CT, ICE law enforcement attempted to conduct a vehicle stop as part of a targeted enforcement operation to arrest an illegal alien. The driver of the vehicle, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo—an illegal alien from Mexico—attempted to evade arrest. From information we are receiving, he rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands, and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer resulting in our officer firing his weapon in self-defense.
The driver was struck, and emergency services were immediately contacted. The driver was transported to the hospital where he passed away from his injuries. DHS-OIG is leading an investigation into the agent-involved shooting. FBI Houston is leading an investigation into the potential assault on a federal law enforcement officer. This is a developing situation, and we will update the public when more information is available.
As of now, DHS has provided no evidence for the claim that Araujo “weaponized his vehicle.” No details, no video, no firsthand testimony with a name attached. Just a vague reference to “information we are receiving.” But the claim of a “weaponized vehicle” is a familiar one. This is the same claim we heard about Renée Good six months ago in Minneapolis, and that has been made by DHS—and that has turned out to be false—in many other cases, as well.
DHS also describes Araujo as an “illegal alien from Mexico.” You wouldn’t know from DHS that Araujo lived here for 35 years, was working in construction to support his wife, mother, and three children, and that he was in fact on his way to a construction site early yesterday morning, driving peacefully through a residential neighborhood with three workers, including a brother, in his car, when he was stopped by the federal agents. This doesn’t seem like someone who would suddenly decide to try to kill a federal agent.
In fact, there doesn’t seem to have been any good reason for ICE to have stopped and tried forcefully to detain Araujo. There was, so far as one can tell, no reason to kill him. And based on past precedent, there’s no reason to believe ICE will tell the truth about what happened.
Araujo’s son, Ronaldo Salgado, wrote on Facebook yesterday,
My father, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a hardworking Mexican man, was the man killed this morning by ICE in the East End.
My father has been in this country for nearly 35 years, working in construction to provide for myself, my two brothers, and my mother.
He was in the process of obtaining his work permit through the legal process. He was on his way to work, picking up his workers.
My father did not deserve this.
Ronaldo Salgado is right. His father did not deserve to be killed by ICE agents. Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal did not deserve to die in ICE custody. These deaths—and many others like them—are a direct effect of Trump’s mass deportation policy. That policy, more than any other, is the embodiment of the cruelty of the Trump administration. There had been, up to this point, twenty-one documented deaths of people in ICE custody in 2026 alone, as documented by Austin Kocher of the Newhouse School at Syracuse University.
But we should recall that Trump campaigned on mass deportation, and that we then elected him. We as a nation are responsible for what’s happened. We can never fully make up for the human cost of what has been done in our name. All we can do now is to act as quickly and unambiguously as possible to reject these policies, and to defeat decisively the spirit of indecency and inhumanity that lies behind them.
AROUND THE BULWARK
The One Word Trump Won’t Say in Turkey… While Recep Erdoğan reaps the fruits of hosting a NATO summit, Turkish democracy pays the price, argues ERIC EDELMAN.
Many Gen Zers Rooted Against Team USA. Here’s Why. Some of the reasons were personal, but some were strongly political, writes RACHEL JANFAZA.
Desperate Trumpists Try to Stir Up a Panic Over ‘Communists’... But while the new Red Scare is a fakeout, parts of the left do pose a problem for Democrats, writes CATHY YOUNG.
The NATO Defense Spending Canard… There’s nothing magical—or strategic—about the 5 percent number, observes MARK HERTLING.
Quick Hits
RAY OF CLARITY: Back in January, when Tulsi Gabbard was still director of national intelligence, she showed up in Fulton County, Georgia with a troop of FBI agents, who seized ballot records from the 2020 election—which, as you may recall, was decided by just 11,780 votes in the Peach State.
The Justice Department investigation into—well, uh, something—in Fulton County continues, but it hit a major roadblock yesterday as a federal judge blocked a grand jury subpoena for information on election workers in Georgia. In fact, “blocked” is an understatement. He nuked it from orbit. CNN has the story:
US District Judge William Ray called the breadth of the subpoena seeking information about Fulton County election workers “staggering.” . . .
“In this Court’s view, the DOJ does not possess a need to enforce the Subpoena greater than the burden of disclosure on Fulton County, and as such, the Court will not enforce it,” he said. . . .
“No evidence has been presented to the Court that the actual Grand Jury in the Northern District of Georgia seeks this information, as opposed to the out-of-district prosecutors who the DOJ has appointed to lead this inquiry who have served this Subpoena in the name of the Grand Jury,” the judge wrote.
It’s generally unseemly to point out what president nominated this or that judge any time there’s a noteworthy or politically fraught decision. But in many of these cases, it is germane, including this one: Ray was appointed by Donald Trump.
LE PEN AGAIN: Of the various foreign franchises of the Trump phenomenon, few are as noxious as France’s Marine Le Pen. Her political platform mostly focuses on immigration restrictions and the “de-Islamization” of France, though it also has room for complaints that Ukraine has been “subjugated” by the United States and calls for a special relationship with Russia. That last point shouldn’t be surprising, considering her party, the National Rally, took out a €6 million loan from a Russian bank, which it only paid back when the political embarrassment became too much.
In France’s last two presidential elections—2017 and 2022—Le Pen challenged Emanuelle Macron and lost. But in last year’s legislative elections, her party picked up 53 seats, bringing its total to 142. That made it the third-largest party in the National Assembly. And now Macron is term-limited.
Last year, Le Pen was convicted of corruption charges (shocking) and barred from running for office. But yesterday, a French court—while upholding her conviction—cleared the way for her to run for president again. “This evening, I am a candidate in the presidential election,” she announced without delay.
The next French presidential elections are next year. Bonne chance.
GET MITCH OR DIE TRYING: Sen. Mitch McConnell has been hospitalized since June 14, though the reason why isn’t public. Before his hospitalization, he was using a wheelchair to navigate the Capitol and his hands were increasingly bruised. Rumors that the 84-year-old former majority leader was on death’s door were rocketing around Trumpworld—mostly fed by Laura Loomer, who tweeted that McConnell was “brain dead” on Monday.
On Tuesday, things changed, though we’re not entirely clear if the situation has become more or less opaque. Majority Leader John Thune and Majority Whip John Barrasso said they had spoken to McConnell on the phone; so too did longtime McConnell ally Scott Jennings of CNN. Spokespeople for the two non-hospitalized senators were eager to emphasize how engaged and sharp McConnell was. Per Politico:
Thune and McConnell “had a lengthy and substantive conversation that covered a variety of topics, including national security,” a spokesperson for the majority leader said in a statement Tuesday.
Kate Noyes, a spokesperson for Barrasso, said the No. 2 leader and McConnell “had a lengthy conversation early this afternoon,” speaking by phone for roughly 20 minutes.
“They caught up about the latest news impacting Senate races, the Graham Platner scandal and the recent Supreme Court ruling on coordinated spending limits,” as well as the Senate agenda, she added. “Senator McConnell was fully engaged and is eager to get back to the Senate.”
There is something inherently odd about all this. It’s not just that McConnell could resolve a lot of confusion if he spoke publicly, even via a voice recording. It’s also the content of these calls. After McConnell was admitted to the hospital under alarming circumstances and remained there for several weeks, Thune and Barrasso spent their twenty minutes on the phone with him talking about Senate races and Supreme Court rulings on coordinated spending?
When someone eventually tackles the task of writing a biography of McConnell, this strange proof-of-life subtweet of Laura Loomer is going to be among the more difficult episodes to describe.2
Cheap Shots
Correction, July 8, 2026, 9:34 a.m. EDT: As originally published, this newsletter misstated when Adam Serwer wrote “The Cruelty Is the Point.” It was in 2018, eight years ago, not six.
If you’re a future biographer and you cite this newsletter in a book about McConnell, we’ll give you a free Bulwark+ membership.
Mr Salgado was murdered. If he wasn’t, we would already have body camera footage on every conservative news outlet to exonerate ICE of wrongdoing. But they will hang their hat on Mr Salgado’s immigration as though it justifies his murder. Just a long national nightmare. Incredible.
Bill: "But we should recall that Trump campaigned on mass deportation, and that we then elected him. We as a nation are responsible for what’s happened. We can never fully make up for the human cost of what has been done in our name. All we can do now is to act as quickly and unambiguously as possible to reject these policies, and to defeat decisively the spirit of indecency and inhumanity that lies behind them."
Indeed. But we also have to recognize that a third of the country is totally down with the "indecency and inhumanity" behind these acts. There is also a percentage of the country that is apathetic to this indecency and inhumanity. I think it's safe to say that Trump didn't change the character of the United States. He simply revealed what was below the surface in the United States. Decent people are haunted by that revelation. The problem is there's not enough of us.