Misfit was here!

Glitter

“All journeys end when we reach our destination but the journeying remains a thing apart, unique unto itself. Most of us make life’s journeys without understanding that the journeying is a separate thing.”

June 17, 2026 

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUN 18

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A senior U.S. official read the text of the fourteen-point memorandum of understanding with Iran over the phone to reporters today, and there’s a reason it has ignited a firestorm.

A memorandum of understanding is usually a nonbinding agreement outlining shared goals and intentions, but in this case, although there is much vague or confusing language in the text, what the White House says is an MOU actually has firm language in it.

First of all, after months of the White House insisting Trump does not need congressional approval for his strikes against Iran because they did not constitute a war, the MOU straight up calls the conflict “the current war.”

The MOU commits the U.S. and Iran “and their allies” to stop military operations “on all fronts, including in Lebanon,” a reference to Israel’s bombing of what it says are Hezbollah camps there. Israel has suggested it will not consider itself bound by any such agreement, but as Anton Troianvoski points out in the New York Times, the language will enable Iran to pressure the U.S. over Israeli attacks in Lebanon or Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon in what Israel calls a “security zone.”

The MOU says the U.S. will “terminate all types of sanctions” against Iran, and it lifts the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports, giving Iran the access to world trade the U.S. previously prevented in order to pressure the regime. It also permits Iran to begin selling oil immediately on the world market.

The MOU says Iran will use “its best efforts”—not a guarantee—“for the safe passage of commercial vessels” through the Strait of Hormuz “with no charge for 60 days only.” It continues: Iran and Oman will decide how to “define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz,” an indication that Iran intends to charge fees for transit of the strait.

The MOU says the U.S. will thaw frozen Iranian assets immediately and also “develop a definitive, mutually agreed plan with at least $300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development” of Iran to repair the damage from U.S. and Israeli strikes. It says the U.S. will grant “[a]ll required licenses, waivers, and permissions needed for the relevant financial transactions,” apparently readmitting Iran to full participation in world financial markets.

In exchange for these concessions, Iran “reaffirms” in the MOU that it will not try to develop or procure a nuclear weapon. That word “reaffirms” is important: it signals that Iran is simply reiterating what it said in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that Trump tore up in 2018.

But, unlike the JCPOA, the MOU contains no language about a process to guarantee Iran’s promise not to pursue a nuclear weapon. When a reporter asked Trump about that absence, he said that what would guarantee Iran’s compliance is fear of renewed U.S. bombing. But Iran has shown it can withstand such attacks, and in any case, the U.S. has no stomach for them.

It looks as if Trump’s war on Iran has cost the U.S. the lives of thirteen service members, injuries to 400 more, and at least $132 billion so far in immediate costs, lost income, and higher consumer costs, only to leave the U.S. in a significantly worse place with regard to Iran than before Trump started bombing. 

The costs to the world have been significantly higher in terms both of lives—beginning with more than 175 Iranian schoolchildren and their teachers—and of economies.

Journalist David Shuster reported that the Iranian government is declaring “total victory.”

Former secretary of state Antony Blinken posted: “By President Trump’s own terms, the war is a failure. The Iranian regime is intact and its military wing more empowered, while the Iranian people are more impoverished, repressed and desperate…. The only ‘achievement’ of the ceasefire is the likely re-opening [of] the Strait of Hormuz—which was open before the war started. And we will apparently pay Iran to do so…. Don’t expect a return to normal any time soon, if at all,” he warned.

In a press opportunity today in France, where he was attending the Group of Seven (G7) conference, an informal forum of industrialized democracies, Trump twice told reporters that he didn’t want to be like President Herbert Hoover. Although he got the history of Hoover’s role in the Great Depression wrong, Trump’s point seemed clear: he didn’t want to be the person to trigger an “economic catastrophe.”

And therein lay the rub for Trump in his war on Iran: so long as Iranian leaders could credibly threaten the passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz, they could throttle about a fifth of the world’s oil supply and much of its fertilizer, plunging the globe into crisis. The terms of the MOU heavily favor Iran, but the strait gives its leaders leverage over Trump and the U.S. This was precisely the scenario that past U.S. presidents sought to avoid by negotiating with Iran rather than bombing it.

Selling the MOU in the U.S. is going to be rough. When a reporter asked Trump today why he didn’t “stick around for the signing ceremony with this Iran peace deal,” the famously camera-courting president answered: “I might, but I’d rather, this is a memorandum of understanding. It’s very important, but it might not be the kind of a document that I should be signing.” The reporter responded: “There is some element to this where you send the vice president. If it works out, great. You look like a genius for sending him. If it doesn’t work out, it’s the vice president’s fault.”

Trump responded: “I like that idea…. This way, if it works out, I’m gonna take the credit; if it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming J.D. You better be careful, J.D. He’s gonna turn his plane around and get the hell outta here. Yeah, I like that idea. I think that’s a good idea.”

MAGA lawmakers like Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) seemed willing to go along with the measure, saying: “I trust President Trump. I trust Vice President Vance. We don’t need to listen to anybody up here on Capitol Hill. Let’s trust these two.” But John Knefel of Media Matters reported that MAGA figures who have been all-in on the war on Iran are revolting against the MOU. “Trump’s Iran deal gives the Islamic Republic big wins upfront—and America nothing,” wrote the New York Post.

Journalist David Shuster reported that Republican senators are furious with Trump. Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger a month ago, posted: “Reagan is rolling over in his grave. Iran’s nuclear ambitions were not curbed, and they have learned that threatening the Strait of Hormuz works and will undoubtedly leverage it in the future. Now, Iran gets to build brand-new infrastructure under this deal.

“Before the war, the strait was open, Iran was being crushed by sanctions, and 13 service members were still alive. Now, 13 Americans are dead, families have paid billions at the pump, sanctions will be lifted, and the bombing has stopped. This is the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”

By tonight, Trump loyalist Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) was defending the idea of Iran having missiles, despite the fact that ending Iran’s missile program was one of Trump’s stated reasons for starting the war in the first place. Marshall told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that he preferred that they not have missiles, but that “the key issue” is that “they have to be able to defend themselves.”

National security scholar Joseph Stieb posted: “It’s like the last 40 years of the Republican Party’s foreign policy didn’t happen.”

After setting Vance up to take the fall for the deal, tonight at a dinner with French president Emmanuel Macron at the Palace of Versailles, Trump signed the MOU himself. It was a moment when a knowledge of history would have been useful. As MeidasTouch noted, it was at Versailles after World War I that the Allied powers forced Germany to sign the Treaty of Versailles, “one of the most famous surrender documents in modern history.”

Earlier in the day, asked by a MeidasTouch reporter about Trump’s cognitive decline at the G7, Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) said: “The president has been humiliated on the world stage, and many Americans are increasingly concerned about his stability and his capacity in the office. It’s deeply distressing to Americans across the political spectrum to see a president so incompetent and so incapable attempting and failing to represent the nation internationally.”

Over a GIF of James Bond saying, “He’s quite mad, you know,” national security scholar Tom Nichols called today “the weirdest and most astonishing day in US foreign policy in decades.”

June 16, 2026

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUN 17

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A Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that even before a fighter launched a slur at former First Lady Michelle Obama, and even before the sight of the corporate branding at the event, only 16% of Americans thought it was appropriate to hold an Ultimate Fighting Championship fight at the White House.

Today, Federal Bureau of Investigation director Kash Patel, who has been in trouble with Trump over stories of his drinking, said the FBI discovered and foiled a plot to attack the UFC fight. The FBI alleged in an affidavit that nineteen attackers planned to target the fight with drones laden with explosives and then to shoot at the fleeing crowd.

Jude Joffe-Block, Lisa Hagen, and Audrey Nguyen of NPR noted in 2024 that Patel often peddled in conspiracy theories and, since taking on the directorship of the FBI, has tripped himself up in the past by announcing things that he later has to walk back. That history meant that social media users greeted the announcement with skepticism.

Tonight the Justice Department announced the arrest of five people in four states. Mark Berman, Amy B. Wang, and Victoria Craw of the Washington Post reported that Matthew C. Quinn, deputy director of the Secret Service, told reporters that the Secret Service had led the investigation and that the UFC fight “was never at risk due to the great investigative work.” In what appeared to be a reference to Patel, he added: “In order to maintain the integrity of the investigation and the security plan, we chose not to leak it.”

Meanwhile, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee today issued a press release announcing they are launching an investigation into Patel’s alleged misuse of FBI funds. Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the highest-ranking Democrat on the committee, says they have received information that Patel had directed more than $1 million in bonuses to agents close to himself. “These payments raise serious concerns that FBI funds are being used to reward political loyalty rather than merit and professionalism,” the Democrats wrote.

The FBI is part of the Department of Justice, and it, too, is undergoing a crisis of confidence in its work.

In Chicago, a case against six protesters for interfering with a federal agent and conspiring to interfere with a federal agent at a detention facility protest fell apart in May when the judge discovered that prosecutors had talked to individual grand jurors outside the courtroom and removed those jurors who refused to indict, as well as apparently overstating the strength of the evidence against the defendants. Then the prosecutors tried to hide evidence of their misconduct by redacting the transcripts from the grand jury.

As Julie Bosman of the New York Times reported, U.S. District Judge April Perry dismissed the case against the “Broadview Six,” saying: “I have read hundreds—if not thousands—of grand jury transcripts involving prosecutors who are the most junior of prosecutors to several U.S. attorneys who appeared before the grand jury. I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.”

Today U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota Daniel Rosen announced his office was charging fifteen people with conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers over their behavior during the federal immigration crackdown in Minneapolis last year that led to the deaths of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Rosen alleges that the defendants are part of two “antifa” groups that “violently oppose immigration law enforcement.”

At the press conference about the charges, prosecutors introduced a Facebook post from one of the accused that said: “We need to become ungovernable.” Journalist Aaron Rupar noted: “Oh, so they have NOTHING nothing.” It’s actually even more embarrassing than that: Trump attended the Libertarian National Convention in 2024 when its theme was “Become Ungovernable,” and stood in front of the banner bearing that slogan, so the idea that the phrase is part of a criminal conspiracy will be awkward to argue.

From Minneapolis, Matt Sepic of MPR News reported that Rosen said the people were “charged not for what they said but what they did.” But Rosen did not answer questions about whether any law enforcement officers were injured and said evidence would come out later. Sepic notes that federal prosecutors charged thirty-six people with assaulting or impeding immigration agents in December and January, but have now dropped eighteen of the cases entirely and eleven more through nonprosecution agreements. Sepic notes that Magistrate Judge David Schultz in April called one of the prosecutors’ charging documents a “false affidavit.”

At the time of the Good and Pretti killings, Open Measures, which tracks the spread of harmful social media activity, noted that right-wing social media personalities tried to redirect public outrage by claiming that community organizers using group chats on Signal were threatening the safety of federal officers. As those claims spread, right-wing media amplified old stories that those opposing ICE agents were “antifa” or part of a “radical left.” They demanded such chats be investigated. Today’s charges cited messages sent in Signal chats.

Reporter Christopher Mathias of MS NOW noted that while the Department of Justice is going after Minneapolis protesters, Greg Bovino, the commander-at-large of the Border Patrol during the Minneapolis crackdown that cost Good and Pretti their lives, has appeared on a white nationalist podcast as he teases a bid for the presidency.

Journalist Kat Abughazaleh, who is one of the Broadview Six, commented: “As the government raids “antifa groups” in Minneapolis with the SAME charges levied against myself and the rest of the Broadview Six, we need to be asking how they got this indictment. And as charges (hopefully) get dropped, we must remember the process is the punishment.”

But today’s charges have redirected at least some media energy from the details emerging about Trump’s “deal” with Iran. While the U.S. has declined to publish details of what appears to be a memorandum of understanding that participants hope will lead to a final agreement, Dov Lieber, Summer Said, Alexander Ward, and Rebecca Feng of the Wall Street Journal report that the agreement says the U.S. will waive sanctions to allow Iran immediately to sell oil and to access the banking, transportation, and insurance systems it will need to do so.

Alayna Treene and Kevin Liptak of CNN report that U.S. negotiators are downplaying the significance of the language in the memorandum of understanding, claiming that language that seems to favor Iran is designed to give cover to Iranian officials back home.

But Philip Wegmann and Lindsay Wise of the Wall Street Journal report that the vagueness of the language of the agreement is not fooling Republican war hawks who stood behind Trump in his attacks on Iran. They are calling early reports about the deal “disturbing” and “utterly disastrous.”

There is other news the administration would likely prefer to cover up, as well.

Sarah Blaskey and Jonathan O’Connell of the Washington Post reported today that even as Trump was assuring the American public that private donors would pay for his ballroom, the White House had already approved tens of millions of taxpayer money for the contractor building the addition.

With access to project summaries, the journalists were able to show that “internal cost estimates have been significantly higher than administration officials have acknowledged in public comments or court filings. They also show that the work was projected to rely heavily on taxpayer dollars from the moment it was announced.” 

And Trump’s renovation of the Reflecting Pool by the Lincoln Memorial is having the effect experts warned of. Because of the dark paint on the floor of the pool, the sun heats the water up even faster than it did before, and the resulting algae bloom has turned the pool bright green. Today, workers poured hydrogen peroxide into the pool to try to kill the algae.