>Nearly four months after the fall of Ilje Boloyan's government, the latest attempt to form a government in Romania has also failed. National Liberal Siegfried Mureșan received only 182 of the 233 votes needed to become prime minister in parliament in Bucharest on Wednesday. On May 5, the Social Democrats (PSD), together with the far-right AUR party, brought down Boloyan's government. Boloyan is currently continuing to serve in a caretaker capacity.

>Mureșan's defeat in Wednesday's vote had been expected. Although the 45-year-old MEP campaigned for the votes of the Social Democrats, his profile closely resembles that of his party colleague Boloyan. Boloyan also attempted to reduce Romania's largest budget deficit among EU member states, using unpopular methods. In 2025, this deficit amounted to over eight percent of Romania's gross domestic product.

>The Social Democratic Party (PSD) leader, Sorin Grindeanu, even compared Boloyan to the communist ruler Nicolae Ceaușescu. He, too, had starved the country to reduce national debt, said the chairman of the party that was long a haven for Ceaușescu's former elite. Observers consider the PSD leader's outrage feigned. A popular interpretation is that the Social Democrats are primarily concerned with positions and government contracts. Boloyan not only increased the value-added tax and froze statutory pensions, but also cut jobs in the public sector. The PSD, which holds more than half of Romania's mayoralties, is considered a powerful party with considerable influence over resource allocation.

>Siegfried Mureșan's political program could be described as "Bolojan light." The politician, originally from Transylvania and fluent in German as the son of a Romanian-German mother, is supported by the same forces that formed Bolojan's minority government. The PNL, the liberal USR, and the Hungarian minority party, the UMDR, together hold only 115 of the 330 seats in the Bucharest parliament. To gain further support, Mureșan promised in his program statement to reduce the value-added tax from 21 to 19 percent "as soon as Romania's budget situation allows."

>Geopolitics also casts a shadow over the debate in the southeastern European country. "We have a choice between a strong Romania and an isolated Romania," Mureșan said in his address immediately before the vote. The national liberal also emphasized that the government he proposed stood for a "European Romania" of rules, laws, and values. This emphasis on Europe is noteworthy because of current speculation that the American government also orchestrated the overthrow of Boloyan's government.

>According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the US ambassador to Greece, Kimberley Guilfoyle, allegedly suggested to Greek Energy Minister Stavros Papastavrou that the United States could bring down the Romanian government. Just over two months after the meeting in Athens, where Guilfoyle promoted the sale of American liquefied natural gas (LNG), Boloyan's government collapsed. In the interim, according to a video published by the Romanian news portal G4 Media, Guilfoyle met with PSD leader Grindeanu in Bucharest. Grindeanu explicitly denied having discussed gas deliveries with Guilfoyle. Guilfoyle, through her lawyer, refuted the Wall Street Journal's account of the Athens meeting.

>George Simion, the leader of the ultranationalist AUR party, which is currently leading by a wide margin in the polls, called for early elections on Wednesday. Raimar Wagner, head of the Bucharest office of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, considers such an event "unlikely." He believes a new attempt at forming a government with a "compromise candidate" who would also satisfy the PSD is more likely. The PSD party leader, speaking before the vote in Bucharest, called the nomination of a new prime ministerial candidate a "possibility."

For reference, here is the gift link to the WSJ article about Guilfoyle's relationship with Marafatsos and her bizarre reference to the collapse of the Greek and Romanian governments.

It's no surprise, but the conclusions of this Hoover Institution study found that high skilled immigration (1) can either help or hurt American workers in high-skilled STEM fields, depending on industry and skill, and (2) generally benefits the large majority of the workforce that is not employed in a high-skilled STEM field.

>In late August, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Masar Badil, an international revolutionary-minded Palestinian support organization, as a cover for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. The action followed the 2024 U.S. and Canadian designations of the closely aligned Samidoun network—which presented itself as a “Palestinian prisoner solidarity” organization—as a PFLP front. These acts were meant to strike a blow against the alleged terror-linked organizations.

>Yet recent events show how little the sanctions have disrupted the network on the ground. Last week, news broke that one of Masar Badil’s youth affiliates secured a generous plea deal following a campus occupation at the University of Washington that resulted in more than $1 million in damage. In November, Masar Badil is set to host a conference in Toronto titled “3 Years of Al-Aqsa Flood”—Hamas’s name for the October 7 massacre—despite the U.S. sanctions.

>Though the sanctions struck at the organizations’ formal structures and leadership, they have done little to blunt their influence. Across North America, a growing number of affiliate groups increasingly cast themselves as Samidoun’s successors, adopting a politics of “strategic risk” and “intentional sacrifice in pursuit of the liberatory struggle,” and normalizing “revolutionary violence.” More decisive action is needed to curb this growing threat.

>The Masar Badil network is extensive. One prominent affiliate, Al-Ahrar, operates as a prisoner-support organization in the mold of the now-sanctioned Samidoun. The organization’s purported mission is a euphemistic sleight of hand that ignores the fact that the prisoners in question are often terrorists and militants. The term “prisoners” also plays on the sympathies of many Western leftists, who have been conditioned to view such captives primarily as victims rather than as perpetrators of violence. Al-Ahrar identifies itself as part of Masar Badil and maintains chapters in Toronto, New York, and New Jersey. The group claims that it “emerged in January 2025 from the ashes of imperialist repression” following the designation of Samidoun in January 2025 and that it “fill[s] the gap“ left by Samidoun’s inability to continue operating as a public-facing organization.

>Other affiliates operate within the Tariq El-Tahrir Youth and Student Network, Masar Badil’s youth wing. These include groups like Alkarama, SUPER UW at the University of Washington, and Nidal. Together, these organizations have helped extend Masar Badil’s influence across North America despite repeated sanctions.

>Even this accounting likely understates the network’s reach. While the 2024 designation of Samidoun made many organizations reluctant to associate with it publicly, its influence did not disappear. Beyond its formal organizations lies a broader ecosystem of activists and advocacy groups across the West that, while not formally tied to Masar Badil or Samidoun, often look to their affiliates for guidance and political leadership.

>Just days before Masar Badil’s designation, the Workshops 4 Gaza collective hosted “One Day We Will All Be Terr*rists: On Designations, Counterinsurgency & the Path of Resistance,” providing a glimpse into how this network operates. During the event, representatives of Al-Ahrar Toronto argued at length that terrorist designations are intended to “criminalize resistance movements.”

>Al-Ahrar Toronto’s two presenters, Cat and Amira, hid their faces behind keffiyehs, but they were open books about their ideology and goals. Their core thesis was that the concept of “terrorism” should be rejected entirely because the term functions as a counterinsurgency tool. By labeling a group as connected to terrorism, they argued, governments isolate revolutionary movements from potential allies and pressure activists to moderate their politics.

>According to the presenters, Al-Ahrar is guided by the Palestinian “resistance leadership, not by Western legality.” Criminalization would not stop their work, they said. The first step for organizers, according to the presenters, is to provide unconditional political support to people and organizations facing “terror counterinsurgency” regardless of the allegations, convictions, or tactics involved. Organizers were even warned against distancing themselves from groups like Antifa or Atlanta’s Stop Cop City protesters—whose antics resulted in one activist’s death—in an effort to protect themselves or appear respectable.

>Unsurprisingly, the speakers also defended a “diversity of tactics” when it comes to attaining their goals. They played a video of a Stop Cop City activist refusing to condemn the destruction of property and arguing that Atlanta deserved worse, and that protesters should use “every means necessary.” Al-Ahrar’s organizers presented the video as a textbook example of rejecting the idea that activists need to condemn more controversial tactics.

>The Al-Ahrar workshop ended with a call for activists to embrace “strategic risk and intentional sacrifice.” The presenters argued that a “total rejection of risk” would reduce radical organizing to “state-sanctioned activism that doesn’t actually challenge or threaten the imperialist machine.” Instead, activists were encouraged to “nurture the spirit of sacrificing our comfort for the collective liberation.”

>The Q&A reinforced the point. One participant asked about publicly associating with Samidoun and even Al-Ahrar despite the terrorism designation. The presenters’ response was to “challenge the idea of safety” and refuse to abandon their comrades “that explore the more higher risk.”

>As the emergence of Al-Ahrar demonstrates, the PFLP-aligned movement is alive and well and extending its influence. During the workshop, Al-Ahrar also promoted the upcoming Masar Badil conference, which will serve as an opportunity for the network to plan, refine its strategy, and determine “the road ahead” for the Palestinian movement.

>Conventionally, sanctions dry up funding pipelines to smaller and lesser-known groups, allowing them to wither away. Yet today, many offshoots continue to receive support and remain active. Others conceal their affiliation with the broader network, as discussed during the workshop’s Q&A. Super UW’s recent plea deal suggests that the full extent of these affiliations and networks remains poorly understood, at least at the local level.

>A broader domestic investigation into the Masar Badil/PFLP-linked network is warranted. This is especially so given its links to organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America. Michelle Munjanattu, the partner of longtime DSA leader David Duhalde, is a member of Samidoun, while Charlotte Kates, a Samidoun international coordinator, has participated in DSA events. Kates also serves as the coordinator of the far-left U.S. National Lawyers Guild’s International Committee—another case where the Masar Badil network’s reach extends beyond Palestinian activism and into broader political and legal spheres.

>Masar Badil and the broader PFLP-linked network continue to exercise surprising influence. To counter it more effectively, the federal government should look beyond sanctions and focus on dismantling the support structures, affiliated organizations, and personnel that allow these groups to persist despite repeated enforcement actions. Failing to do so risks further radicalization and the continued spread of semiautonomous groups operating under their banner.

KYIV—The missiles come in a wave of three, one after another. The walls of the apartment building shake as alarms from cars jolted by the force of the explosions join the sirens echoing across the city in a cacophony. The attack continues.

Huddled in the hallway of his apartment, Dima, 25, follows the attack live through a Telegram channel. Several missiles are flying over Kyiv. The names of neighborhoods flash across the screen: Solomianskyi, Boryspil, Zhuliany, Sviatoshyn, Sviatoshyn—Dima’s neighborhood.

An explosion rings out. Then three more. The windows shake. Then everything stops. Silence.

Dima holds his breath.

“The sky is clear,” the Telegram channel reports. “But the ballistic threat persists. Stay in shelters.”

A notification flashes on his phone: “A residential building has been destroyed in the Brovary area,” on the outskirts of Kyiv.

Dima puts his phone down. More missiles are coming.

Since the beginning of the summer, Russian forces have sharply increased their air attacks on Ukraine. In July alone, they launched at least 376 missiles and nearly 5,000 drones. Most were directed at Kyiv, with attacks occurring roughly every 48 hours. Facing a shortage of air defense systems, Ukraine reports it intercepted only 28 percent of the ballistic missiles. On the night of August 1, only one of the 27 missiles launched was intercepted. Across Ukraine, 437 civilians were killed in July, 54 in Kyiv alone.

With air defenses in short supply, Ukrainians have turned to Telegram channels that track, sometimes second by second, the trajectories of drones and missiles crossing the skies above their country.

Dima, who is from western Ukraine and works as a civil servant in the defense sector, follows only two channels: “Kyivsky Nebo,” or “Kyiv’s Sky,” which has more than 300,000 subscribers, and “Monitoring Kyiv,” which has nearly 100,000. He also occasionally checks “Stratehichna Aviatsiya,” an open-source intelligence (OSINT) channel covering the entire country.

“I chose them because they are reliable. They issue alerts when it is necessary to take shelter or when the risk is so high that it is better to seek shelter preventively in the subway.”

But, Dima says, he no longer even has time to run to a shelter now that Russian forces are increasingly relying on ballistic missile strikes against Kyiv. A missile fired from Russia’s Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine, can reach the Ukrainian capital in just a few minutes, leaving very little time to get to an underground shelter.

“They are so fast that sometimes the explosion comes before the sirens even go off. So we hide in the hallway, away from the windows, or in our bathroom. Sometimes we go to the first floor of our building.”

An emotional outlet.

In her 2026 study, “Digital War,” Kateryna Bystrytska, a researcher at Rutgers University, identified more than 25 Telegram channels that monitor the Ukrainian skies in real time. NearlyMore than 900,000 messages were shared on these channels between 2022 and 2024.

According to Bystrytska, there are three types of channels: military channels, which use a neutral tone; OSINT channels, which share little beyond maps; and local activist channels, which tend to use a lighter, almost humorous tone.

One of the most prominent activist channels is “Monitoring Kyiv.”

“They make jokes, try to lighten the mood and reassure us,” says Olena Chybkova, 30. “But most importantly, they saved my life. A missile was heading toward my building. I had just enough time to get down to the shelter, and I survived.”

Since then, Olena has moved to Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv.

“It is less dangerous than my old neighborhood, Solomianskyi, one of the most exposed areas of the city. But I still check these Telegram channels during attacks.”

For both Dima and Olena, these channels offer much more than a way to survive. They create a sense of belonging and solidarity amid the attacks.

“You feel less alone during the attacks,” Dima says. “We talk in the comments, send each other memes and try to relieve the pressure through humor. You get the feeling that you are not alone, even when everyone is hiding in their bathtub or in the hallway of their apartment.”

Bystrytska’s research confirms this observation. She argues that these channels provide an emotional outlet for the stress and trauma of war.

The researcher calls this phenomenon “digital companionship.” At the end of an alert, for example, an administrator might write, “All clear, go pee and go to sleep.” The phrase may sound trivial, but it captures the emotional support these channels provide. Night after night, they help their audiences get through sleepless nights and the trauma of air attacks, while creating the feeling of an intimate conversation among friends.

Around the clock.

Joker, the pseudonymous founder of “Stratehichna Aviatsiya,” which has more than 100,000 subscribers, says he tries to maintain a professional tone while building a parasocial relationship with his community. Launched in February 2024, the channel now employs a handful of people, paid through donations from subscribers.

“We also have a team of 10 volunteers and relay information throughout the day and night. It is painstaking work that goes on 24 hours a day,” Joker says.

He takes pride in the quality of his posts and says the channel distinguishes itself from other Telegram channels through its speed.

“We are very fast, and most of our information comes directly from the military, with whom we are in constant contact. This allows us to provide reliable information.”

Joker is vague about why the military shares such information with independent accounts, referring to the arrangements as informal.

“There are agreements,” he says. “Generally speaking, the military does not really have the right to publish whatever it wants.”

The accuracy of these alerts has steadily improved since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. At first, Telegram channels would simply report that a drone was “moving from Crimea toward the Kyiv region.” Today, they can track its progress almost in real time, reporting its movement from one neighborhood to another and sometimes estimating its arrival within about 30 minutes.

Bystrytska’s research shows that this evolution owes both to the growing expertise of channel administrators and to Ukrainians’ growing familiarity with the different types of aerial threats and their trajectories.

Since creating his channel, Joker’s life has been shaped by sleepless nights, exercise, managing his teams, and spending time with his family. He admits that he struggles to balance his personal and professional lives, sometimes working several nights in a row without sleeping.

“This lifestyle led me to burnout last year. Thanks to my family, my teams, and seeing the usefulness of my work, I have gradually started to rebuild myself.”

Joker is nevertheless aware of his mission. Every night, tens of thousands of people follow his work. In a sea of Telegram channels of varying reliability, Kyiv residents have made his channel one of the most relied upon.

Dima explains why that is so.

“Unfortunately,” Dima says, “many sensationalist channels exploit people’s fear to generate engagement, which they then hope to turn into revenue. They might announce, for example, ‘Warning, 100 missiles are heading toward Kyiv,’ when it is not true. Today, I only trust these three channels. They are the only ones that alert me immediately to the reality of the threat, when it really exists and when it does not.”

Arizona families won big this week. The teachers union and Save Our Schools fell short (again) in their latest attempt to roll back the universal Empowerment Scholarship Account program that helps more than 100,000 students there.

The groups needed 255,949 valid signatures to place their Protect Education Act on the November ballot. They submitted 421,451, but after legal challenges and county reviews, so many proved invalid that the initiative appears to have fallen well short of the minimum number.

Nearly 70,000 signatures were disqualified. The Arizona Free Enterprise Club noted that the initiative is projected to be more than 10,000 signatures short. That projection rests on the trial court’s ruling and the validity rates reported by Arizona’s county recorders. On Tuesday, theArizona Supreme Court rejected the teachers unions’ appeal and upheld the trial court, confirming the shortfall and keeping the measure off the ballot.

The teachers union group Protect Education Accountability Now admitted defeat the same day, posting on social media: “Today, we acknowledge a difficult reality: the Protect Education Act will not qualify for the November ballot, and we are furious.”

The teachers unions spent nearly $7 million on the drive. That works out to more than $27 per signature against the threshold they needed. With that kind of money, they should have qualified without difficulty. Instead they failed. They are so far on the wrong side of history that they could not even buy their way onto the ballot.

Part of the problem was the people they hired to gather the signatures. The campaign relied on convicted felons and child sex offenders as circulators. Those choices produced sheets that could not survive scrutiny. Duplicates and other defects added to the pile of invalid names. School-choice supporters challenged the petitions. The courts and county recorders did their jobs. The numbers collapsed. The high court has now closed the door.

This is not the first time the same network has overstated its backing. In 2022, Save Our Schools Arizona tried to kill school choice at the ballot box. The group’s stated signature total turned out to be off by about 59 percent from the actual number delivered. The petitions never even reached the formal validation process. The pattern is consistent: bold claims followed by soft results once the paperwork faces real review.

Arizona lawmakers rejected a last-minute deal with the teachers union at the end of the legislative session. The Arizona Education Association offered to drop the Protect Education Act if the legislature would abandon its anti-union measures and agree to new regulations on the private school-choice program. The AEA’s eagerness for that bargain suggests the union already doubted the legitimacy of enough of its signatures. 

Republican Sens. Jake Hoffman and Warren Petersen voted against the deal. Their decision proved a blessing in disguise for the more than 100,000 education savings account parents in Arizona. The program remains open and unrestricted.

Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts continue to serve families who want options beyond assigned district schools. Parents use the funds for private tuition, tutoring, therapies, and curricula that fit their children. Enrollment has grown because the program works for those families. The teachers unions have spent years and millions of dollars trying to reverse that growth. This latest effort shows the limits of their approach. Money alone does not manufacture valid signatures or public support.

The Protect Education Act would have imposed an income cap and other restrictions that would have forced thousands of current students out of the program. The failure to qualify means those students stay enrolled. The legislative rejection of the end-of-session bargain means the unions could not trade one set of demands for another. Both outcomes protect parental choice.

School-choice opponents will continue to organize and spend. They have done so before and will do so again. Each time, the facts on the ground – actual signatures, actual court rulings, actual parental demand – have cut against them. Arizona has shown that a well-designed universal program can survive repeated political attacks when the numbers and the law are on the side of families.

The shortfall this week is clear and now final. The unions spent nearly $7 million, submitted hundreds of thousands of signatures, and still came up short. The trial court and the county recorders spoke first. The Arizona Supreme Court has now rejected the appeal. Arizona parents keep their options. That is the result that matters.

archive link

>During her January 2025 confirmation hearing to be secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem was asked how she would strengthen the nation’s cyberdefenses. Noem told senators that she would make the department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency “smaller” and “more nimble.” President Trump had created CISA as a stand-alone agency within the Department of Homeland Security during his first term to give cybersecurity more institutional heft, and it had grown quickly with support from lawmakers of both parties. But after CISA declared the 2020 presidential election to be “the most secure in American history” and the agency’s director, Christopher Krebs, refused to back Trump’s claims that the vote had been stolen, Krebs became a target for the president’s fury and a seething grudge.

>During the DOGE fever of the first few months of Trump’s return, CISA’s budget was reduced and its staff cut by one-third. The agency hasn’t had a permanent, Senate-confirmed director since Trump retook office. In April, the White House proposed deeper cuts to CISA’s budget, but Republican lawmakers have raised concerns that critical U.S. infrastructure is already too vulnerable.

>In June, Noem’s replacement, Markwayne Mullin, reversed course. He told lawmakers during a DHS budget hearing that he wants to add 600 positions at CISA. The agency has scheduled new hiring expos, and Acting Director Nicholas Andersen says that he’s “ruthlessly prioritizing” critical cyberdefense roles. But the United States is now nearly six months into a war with Iran, an aggressive and capable cyber foe—and preparations for the midterm elections are under way, with far less intelligence from CISA about foreign and domestic threats.

>Hackers with suspected ties to Iran targeted U.S. water and wastewater systems late last month in more than a dozen states. In Braham, Minnesota, the attacks temporarily shut down the water system. The town was one of more than 30 systems that were targeted, state officials said, describing the attacks as the most extensive they’ve seen. The Trump administration has not confirmed Iran’s purported role in the water-system hacks or said how many states or utility systems have been affected—or whether there have been other breaches. Three port facilities in North Carolina reported disruptions to operations from cyberattacks two weeks ago, although authorities haven’t linked the incidents to a specific actor. But CISA, the FBI, and the EPA warned last month that Iran-affiliated hackers are attempting to exploit vulnerabilities in U.S. systems. Cybersecurity experts told us that hacking attempts could spread as the midterms approach and hostilities with Tehran enter what Trump has characterized as a more low-key phase aimed at squeezing the Iranian economy. Iran may respond by going after U.S. infrastructure. DHS did not respond to a request for comment.

>Despite the elevated threat from Iran, the Trump administration continues to focus its attention on questioning the integrity of U.S. elections. The president and Andersen have each met recently with election deniers who have spent years attacking the officials who carry out the democratic process and calling for votes to be counted by hand. The administration has halted federal intelligence briefings for state officials responsible for overseeing the vote, and it has ended funding for an information-sharing network. Federal employees who worked to combat foreign disinformation within CISA were put on leave, and DHS hired Heather Honey, a conservative activist who’d tried to help overturn Trump’s 2020 defeat, to oversee election integrity. The administration is investigating the 2020 elections in Georgia and Arizona, and demanding access to data about voters—and Mullin has threatened to throw election officials in prison if they don’t comply.

>The administration’s stances are deepening distrust and straining relations with state and local election officials, especially those who are Democrats. Although the ability of foreign attackers to change election results remains low, given the decentralization of the system, former CISA officials told us, the broader goal of hackers would be to undermine confidence in democratic institutions and the integrity of U.S. elections. But that’s what the president and his allies are already doing as they continue to make false or unproven claims about rampant voter fraud. State officials worry that if a foreign hack actually happens, the administration will use the incident as a justification to press for more federal control.

>CISA was meant to provide nonpartisan, technical expertise and function like the Transportation Security Administration or the Secret Service. It has no regulatory authority, so it relies on the trust of state and local officials who want its support and advice. But the hope that it would float above politics was damaged after the 2020 presidential election. Republican lawmakers erupted at the Biden administration’s attempts to enlist CISA against foreign misinformation campaigns, accusing the administration of “weaponizing” the agency to pressure social-media companies and censor conservative speech.

>Today, it’s mostly Democratic officials who are wary of the agency. Half a dozen Democratic secretaries of state, along with some of their staff members, told us that they no longer look to CISA as a reliable partner to help safeguard their election-related systems. They have tried to replace the role of the agency by sharing information with one another and enlisting the help of private contractors, state and local law enforcement, state homeland-security departments and National Guard, emergency-management agencies, and nonprofit organizations (including one filled with ex-CISA officials).

>But no other entity can replace the extensive intelligence gathering and threat analysis that the federal government performs by drawing on its web of agencies and cyber units, experts told us. It took years for CISA to earn the trust of state and local election officials, some of whom had been suspicious of the agency during its early days but came to appreciate its help in responding to cyber threats, limiting damage, and even assessing buildings for vulnerabilities in an era shaped by political violence.

>Krebs, now an independent consultant, was singled out by the White House in an April 2025 presidential memorandum titled “Addressing Risks From Chris Krebs and Government Censorship” that claimed that he’d “falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen, including by inappropriately and categorically dismissing widespread election malfeasance and serious vulnerabilities with voting machines.”

>The attacks on water systems may be a warm-up. Krebs told us that cyberattackers target utilities that are in some way connected to the internet. Many smaller water systems with fewer employees lack expertise but may have a greater need to perform remote operations that require connectivity. During previous attacks on water utilities, hackers sought out systems with poor password security, which allowed them to disrupt operations until the interference was detected. Krebs said that these weaknesses are a result of a wider, lackluster approach to cyber risks, but he added that it’s unfair for Trump officials to tell local governments that it’s solely their responsibility to fend off the attacks.

>The U.S. bombing campaign in Iran has hit bridges, desalination plants, and power stations, and Trump has threatened to wipe out the rest of the country’s physical infrastructure. Although Iran can’t retaliate from the air, it can try to hit back online.

>“If you’re gonna go start a shooting war with someone that we know has capabilities, you have a responsibility to work with state and local partners and give them a hand,” Krebs said. “You can’t have a geopolitical conflict on a global level that’s going to manifest at the local level and not do anything in between.”

>Jen Easterly, who ran CISA during the Biden administration, told us that water systems and other U.S. utilities were created to maximize efficiency and reliability, not security. “They have a lot of inherent weaknesses, but I don’t think these small towns and municipalities should have to defend themselves from the Iranian government,” she said. AI models are making it easier for hackers to find vulnerabilities and exploit these systems, she said: “The threats are moving faster and the risks are more dangerous than ever.”

>Most of the voting equipment used in U.S. elections is not connected to the internet and produces paper ballots as a backup against manipulated tallies. It is the other, online elements of the electoral process that remain most vulnerable, including voter-registration systems and state and local election websites that report results. If hackers can inflict outages or make abrupt changes by hacking those sites, they can damage public confidence.

>Adrian Fontes, a Democrat who serves as secretary of state in Arizona, told us that he remains skeptical of CISA and the administration it reports to. “They cut off all support for us; they’ve threatened to investigate us, they’ve continued to promote falsehoods against election officials across the country,” he said. “And that’s not the posture that an ally would take. That’s what an adversary would do.”

>One day after the United States struck Iran’s nuclear capabilities last summer, a suspected pro-Iranian intruder gained access to the Arizona secretary of state’s server and websites. The cyberattacker defaced websites displaying election results dating to 2016 and replaced candidate photos with images of a late Iranian ayatollah. State staff scrambled to limit the damage and alerted state-government officials. But given CISA’s new direction and staff, Fontes did not directly tell the agency as he would have previously. Instead, his office asked state homeland-security officials to connect with CISA—but without identifying the office that was affected. “I don’t trust them,” Fontes told us at the time, adding that he had lost confidence that the agency was collaborating in good faith.

>Some state election officials told us that they fear that any information they share with CISA about cyber intrusions, weaknesses, or threats could be used against them as evidence of malfeasance or wrongdoing. They watched that scenario unfold when Trump blamed Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, for cyberattacks on his state’s water utilities, not Iran, the suspected culprit. “The strange thing is, after this water incident and others, I don’t have to worry about state and nonstate malicious actors,” Walz told us. “I have to worry about this administration.”

>One election official in a battleground state told us that he had received a threat briefing in April from major technology companies that said that, based on their intelligence, they have a “high degree of confidence that Iran is going to attempt to disrupt the general election this year.” The state official said that he wasn’t surprised by the information but that he was baffled when a CISA official reached out a few weeks ago, after Trump’s prime-time address questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 election, for the first time in many months to let him know that CISA “would like to come back and help.” He remains skeptical.

>Andersen, CISA’s acting director, faced sharp questioning from Democratic secretaries of state when he appeared on a video call with them on Monday, twirling a pen and sipping an energy drink, according to people on the call. They asked him why they should trust the agency, whether CISA would resume offering them intelligence briefings, and whether it would restart penetration testing of their systems (another service that they said had gone dormant) before the November election. Andersen sidestepped some of the questions, gave noncommittal responses to others, and said that government shutdowns had affected various services. He also told the group that some of the services for election officials might resume in 2027, those on the call said.

>Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, told us that he got the impression that CISA is “mostly writing off the 2026 election cycle” when it comes to direct services for states. “They kind of seemed resigned to looking forward to the next election cycle and not this one,” Simon said. Several secretaries of state said that although they hope the federal government will restore the services before the November election, it is late in the cycle for CISA to help in any meaningful way.

One day President Trump wants to dial down hostilities with Iran. “We’re low-keying” the conflict, he said Sunday. A day later, though, he was keyed up. After Tehran demanded reparations from Washington as part of its attempt to resurrect June’s Memorandum of Understanding, Trump said on Truth Social that it was the Iranians who should:

>Compensate America for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their roadside bombs and many conflicts, for which they are famous, as led initially by General Soleimani, including the families of those killed on the USS Cole, and thousands of others killed in combat.

The problem is simple. For all his bluster about staring down the mad mullahs, Trump is on the run. It isn’t simply that the American military has almost exhausted its store of offensive munitions or that Iran is installing a fresh bunch of hardliners in its leadership. It is that, as an exposé in the Washington Post revealed last night, Trump, for fear of being targeted by Iran, felt compelled to adopt deceptive maneuvers as he departed from Ankara at the conclusion of the NATO summit in early July. He hid in a Turkish catering container and secretly boarded a conventional military aircraft rather than fly on his shiny new Qatari jet – which is masquerading as the new Air Force One – or on the original Air Force One. So much for Trump’s claim that the world would no longer mock America during his presidency. If anything, he has inadvertently provided a sustained laugh track.

The most potent charge being hurled at Trump is that he is becoming the new Jimmy Carter. Carter’s presidency foundered during the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, when student militants stormed the American embassy in Tehran and a military rescue attempt in April the following year called “Operation Eagle Claw” failed in the Iranian desert, killing eight American servicemen. Trump, who dwells mentally in the 1970s – when he was on the make, has consistently bashed Carter:

>If you look back to Afghanistan or if you look back to the Jimmy Carter days, they were different days. We’re a respected country again.

Oops. Now it is Trump who has become a hostage of Tehran. Inflation is rising. His poll numbers are plummeting. Faced with the possible loss of Congress in the midterm elections, his only response is that he won’t bestir himself to campaign on behalf of his Republican brethren: “I have a busy schedule.” Small wonder that former New Jersey governor Chris Christie observed on ABC’s This Week that “Donald Trump is about to become what he never, ever wanted to be: Jimmy Carter.”

But there is a difference between Carter and Trump. One area where Carter did score a big foreign policy victory was with the 1978 Camp David Accords, which established peace between Egypt and Israel. Carter devoted considerable effort to the endeavor, and his patience paid off. Trump, by contrast, issued a half-baked peace plan for Gaza that was concocted by his Board of Peace, claiming that it was of “historic” importance. It should hardly come as a surprise that on Sunday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed it: “I want to be clear here: Israel is ruling out the 15-point document.”

Compounding Trump’s difficulties is a fresh round of ructions in Yemen. The Iranian-backed Houthis are not only vowing to block Saudi oil shipments through the Red Sea, but also claiming credit for a drone attack on an oil facility in Jazan, Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, Trump is boasting that “we control the strait 100 percent.” We do? As oil prices steadily increase and his popularity drops, Trump seems to be inhabiting his own dream palace.