Trump’s Iran Hawks Found a Way to Love the Surrender.

Happy Juneteenth.

America’s 250^th anniversary celebration are tragicomic. The country is “celebrating” liberation from a monarch while the chief executive and half the populace are furiously attempting to create a competitive autocracy centered around a strongman who has said—openly—that he wants to “terminate” parts of the Constitution and be a “dictator.”

July Fourth should not be a celebration this year. It should be a wake.

But Juneteenth is different. Today we recognize America’s victory over its own sin. We celebrate the idea that there have always been authoritarians in America and that sometimes, with generations of struggle and sacrifice, they can be defeated.

Because this is the position we find ourselves in today.

In 2026, Juneteenth speaks to our reality while July Fourth is double-speak, a truncheon of propaganda wielded by an aspiring autocrat. In 2026, Juneteenth is the real Independence Day.

So celebrate it. Even if you do so in some small, private way. Don’t let today go unmarked in your own life. Take note. Tonight I will raise a glass and echo the toast from Hadestown, “To the world we dream about, and the one we live in now.”

Happy Juneteenth, fam.

1. Cold Fusion

Yesterday I told you that Donald Trump would not be pushed off of his surrender by angry Republican Iran hawks—because he knows that those people (a) represent like 400 voters, total; and (b) will find some way to rationalize the thing they are so mad about.

I said it might take the Iran hawks a week, or a month, or a year to put their gimp masks on, but that they’d do it eventually.

It took 48 hours.

For your delectation, I present Mark Levin and Hugh Hewitt:...