Coalition of the Willing

Today’s notice: No rush to brief Congress on Iran. Trump keeps an uncharacteristically low profile. How will this affect shutdown talks? Who is ahead as Texas gears up for a big primary election day? ICE wants to spend big on Tasers. Plus: Does the war in Iran change the midterms story?

THE LATEST

What comes next? Members of Congress will get classified briefings on Iran tomorrow, per NOTUS’ Reese Gorman. The Gang of Eight was briefed over the weekend on the military operation in Iran, but many other lawmakers don’t seem to be in a particular rush to learn more.

Briefers will include Sec. of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Secretary of Defense (slash War) Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Gen. Dan Caine.

Votes on presidential war powers in the House and Senate appear to have shifted to later in the week, possibly Wednesday (it can’t go later because the week was already cut short due to Jesse Jackson’s funeral). The vote was expected to fail before the war started, and no lawmaker has publicly changed their mind on authorizing war powers now that actual war is a reality.

Combat operations “will continue until all our objectives are achieved,” Trump said in an address posted to Truth Social yesterday.

“We figured it will be four weeks or so,” he told the Daily Mail. Trump told the New York Times “four to five weeks” a few hours later.

Three American servicemembers have been killed in action and five severely wounded in the opening hours of the war, the U.S. military announced. “Sadly, there will likely be more before it ends. That’s the way it is,” Trump said in his address.

European allies plan to get involved, sort of. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz issued a joint statement Sunday condemning retaliatory strikes launched by Iran. The leaders said they would “work together with the U.S. and allies in the region” to limit the chances Iranian strikes are successful.

In a video address to the U.K., Starmer said his nation’s military would not be assisting in offensive strikes. “We all remember the mistakes of Iraq,” he said. “And we have learned those lessons.”

Who will make decisions about Iran’s future remains unclear after the U.S.-Israeli strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Interim leaders were reportedly announced yesterday, and Trump told The Atlantic, “They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them.”

Open tabs: FBI probing whether Iran attack motivated Austin shooter who killed 2 (WaPo); Trump told FBI Director Kash Patel he didn’t like his Olympics hijinks (NBC); Democrats Allege Trumpworld Insiders May Be Betting on War in Iran (NOTUS); How Wesley Hunt of Texas Is Working in Plain Sight With Outside Groups (NYT)

From the White House

Opsec? The voice of the administration during this war so far has been Trump. The president did not make a traditional speech to the American people on broadcast TV, instead posting them directly to Truth Social.

The CENTCOM X account has been the leading voice providing tactical updates from the ground, describing what assets were deployed for the strikes, sometimes with video, and refuting claims from Iran. The account was also the first to announce the deaths of the three service members.

The view from one outside MAGA strategist: “I think the administration has to communicate to the American people how this serves American interests,” the strategist told Jasmine. “This has yet to be done.”

Trump participated in several short phone interviews with individual outlets in addition to his latest direct-to-camera message, but no senior administration officials were on the Sunday shows, leaving that work to their Republican allies in Congress.

“I think an eight-minute address to the American people, whether the president posted on social media or whether it happens on your network, is in keeping with presidential custom of addressing the American people,” Sen. Tom Cotton told CBS.

The president uncharacteristically resisted talking to reporters on his way home from Mar-a-Lago — but did point out two new statues in the Rose Garden.

“Unbelievable statues, come and look at them,” he told reporters shouting questions about Iran.

From the Hill

Will this change shutdown politics? Republicans certainly seem to think so. On a call with his conference last night, Speaker Mike Johnson said there will be a new Department of Homeland Security appropriations vote this week, Reese reports.

The line to pressure Democrats: “As we face a heightened threat landscape, it is more important now than ever that we fully fund the Department of Homeland Security,” Rep. Andrew Garbarino, chair of the House DHS committee, said.

Johnson rejected some GOP efforts to add the SAVE Act to the new DHS appropriations vote, Reese reports. Theoretically, this makes a vote against funding DHS in the middle of a conflict even tougher for Democrats to take.

But does it? “You think Democrats will now fund ICE to kill Americans, tear gas schools, and disappear legal immigrants because Trump also brazenly violated the Constitution and started a disastrous war with Iran that no American wants?” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy posted yesterday. (He also posted that the war was launched to distract from Trump’s domestic political problems.)

From Texas

All eyes on the Lone Star State. Tomorrow’s Texas primaries should give some big “future of the party” answers on both the Republican and Democratic sides. The final poll from Emerson College gives James Talarico an edge over Jasmine Crockett on the Dem side, and Ken Paxton is up over John Cornyn on the GOP side. But truly how this shakes out is anyone’s guess.

Ahead of the primaries, we’ve got a special edition of the On NOTUS podcast diving into both the Democratic and Republican Senate races, featuring reporters who know the state well: NOTUS’ Daniella Diaz, Reese Gorman and Alex Roarty, as well as longtime Texas scribe Patrick Svitek. Listen to the episode here.

THE BIG ONE

The November of it all. What to make of a new, very Forever War-sounding conflict in a midterm year? We asked around.

The MAGA blowback question. Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is very upset, and other still-in-good-graces MAGA voices are fairly upset, too. Will a break this hard with the generally accepted understanding of America First be more than a tempest in the MAGA teapot?

The polling. The public was broadly against military action in Iran in polling before the war began, and early numbers show they are just as against it now. This administration did not spend a lot of time gearing the public up for this, and it may reap what it did not sow.

The Democrats. The aforementioned war powers vote in Congress this week is a cause the party is rallying around. Casting this as yet another shattered norm (starting a war without asking Congress) is appealing to some Democrats. But others warn that’s not enough to catch public attention: oppose this war, full stop, they say.

The bottom line: “All the people who I think are going to be pissed off about this to the point where they would withhold their vote or switch to voting Democratic, I suspect they already moved in that direction some time ago,” veteran Republican strategist Liz Mair said.

NEW ON NOTUS

ICE plans to spend big on Tasers: The Trump administration wants to buy $220 million worth of new Tasers for immigration agents, NOTUS’ Jackie Llanos reports. The massive purchase comes as Democrats push to rein in the agency’s aggressive tactics.

“The devotion of vast resources to this mass detention and deportation agenda has created an immigration industrial complex, with astronomical increases in contracts that contribute to and profit from the suffering of other human beings,” Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff told Jackie in a statement.

More: Senate Intelligence Leader Lays Out Worst-Case Scenario After Trump’s Iran Strikes, by Samuel Larreal

NOT US

• Inside Anthropic’s Killer-Robot Dispute With the Pentagon, by Ross Anderson for The Atlantic
  
• Solar power’s newest friends: MAGA influencers, by Kelsey Brugger, Zack Colman and Pavan Acharya for Politico
  
• Kash Patel’s Girlfriend Seeks Fame and Fortune, Escorted by an F.B.I. SWAT Team, by Elizabeth Williamson for The New York Times

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