THE DAILY REPUBLIC
American politics, told straight — because the republic is a daily project.
Thursday, July 9, 2026 • Edition No. 1
The Iran War Is Back On — and So Is the Threat on Trump’s Life
The ceasefire didn’t survive the week. Speaking at the NATO summit in Ankara, President Trump declared the U.S.-Iran truce over, and American forces resumed strikes after accusing Tehran of attacking commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow waterway that a huge share of the world’s oil passes through.
Then things got personal. Israel shared intelligence with U.S. officials warning that Iran has developed a new plot to assassinate the president, according to The Wall Street Journal. Trump addressed it himself with reporters, saying flatly that he believes he’s a top target. “I’m No. 1 on the kill list for Iran,” he said.
The precautions followed him home. As tensions spiked, the Secret Service recommended Trump fly out of Turkey on the older, legacy Air Force One rather than the newer jet, purely out of caution. Reporters aboard were told to keep their window shades down, and the plane’s transponder reportedly wasn’t switched on until it had crossed the Black Sea. Trump later briefed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone on “American moves in the Gulf”; Netanyahu, in turn, raised concerns about Turkish President Erdogan’s rhetoric toward Israel and a possible U.S. sale of F-35 jets to Turkey.
Worth sitting with: none of this has gone to a vote. Article I of the Constitution puts the power to declare war in Congress’s hands, not the president’s alone — and this conflict has expanded for months without one, even as it nudges gas and energy prices higher and puts people you may know stationed in the Gulf in harm’s way.
Trump Opens the Door to Tariffs on the Planes You Fly — but Doesn’t Slam It Yet
President Trump signed a proclamation this week targeting commercial aircraft, jet engines, and aircraft parts under Section 232, the same national-security trade law he used on steel and aluminum in his first term. The Commerce Secretary’s investigation found that America has become too dependent on foreign aerospace suppliers — pointing to counterfeit and non-compliant parts linked to real problems like fuselage corrosion and compromised engines, plus a shrinking domestic workforce.
Here’s the twist: the Secretary didn’t recommend immediate tariffs. He recommended negotiation instead — and Trump went with that, directing the Commerce Secretary and U.S. Trade Representative to spend the next 180 days working out agreements with trading partners before deciding on anything more aggressive.
The constitutional wrinkle worth knowing: tariffs are a power the Constitution assigns to Congress, not the president. Section 232, passed in 1962, is one of several laws where Congress handed that authority over to the executive branch for national-security cases — a decades-old delegation that predates almost everyone reading this. Whatever you think of that arrangement, credit where due: this time, the administration chose the slower, negotiated path over an immediate tariff hike on an industry that builds the planes you fly on, and whose costs — if tariffs eventually land — tend to show up in your ticket price.
The Government Just Held Tryouts for Software That Could Speed Up Your Next Permit
Buried under the week’s louder headlines: the White House Council on Environmental Quality announced the winners of its first Permitting Innovators Expo, picking up to 50 tech companies out of an open call to showcase tools that could speed up federal environmental reviews and permitting. The selections range from giants like Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe, and Deloitte to a wave of smaller AI-native startups, all pitching ways to automate document review, screen sites against environmental data, and manage the paperwork that currently makes federal permitting take years.
The effort traces back to a directive Trump signed in April 2025 ordering agencies to modernize permitting technology, and the winners will demo their tools July 31 to federal agencies and policymakers before being folded into a Solutions Catalog agencies can pull from later this year.
It’s a quietly conservative approach to a genuinely bipartisan complaint: instead of writing new legislation or standing up a new agency to fix permitting delays, this is the government shopping for existing private-sector tools to do the job faster — the kind of shrink-government-by-using-the-market move that’s easy to overlook next to a war or a Supreme Court fight, but that’s the difference between a highway, a housing development, or a power line near you breaking ground next year instead of five years from now.
Maine’s Senate Race Just Blew Up in Real Time
Graham Platner’s insurgent Senate campaign is over in everything but paperwork. He announced Wednesday night he was suspending his bid after a Politico report detailed a rape allegation from 2021, followed by a Washington Post report from an ex-girlfriend alleging he removed a condom without her consent. Platner has called the allegations false, but the damage was immediate: the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee pulled its spending, and prominent backers Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren withdrew their endorsements.
He hasn’t formally withdrawn yet. Under Maine law, Platner has until 5 p.m. Monday to file the paperwork that lets the party pick a replacement before a July 27 deadline — and as of Thursday afternoon, the secretary of state’s office said nothing official had arrived. Democrats have already voted to hold a 600-delegate nominating convention to choose his successor.
Into the vacuum stepped Nirav Shah, the former Maine CDC director who led the state’s COVID response and recently lost the Democratic primary for governor, officially launching his Senate campaign Thursday. A new poll testing Shah, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, and former state Senate President Troy Jackson against Republican incumbent Susan Collins found every matchup inside the margin of error — a genuine toss-up, and one of the very few Senate seats in the country either party could plausibly win, in a chamber that decides who confirms judges and writes the laws touching your taxes, your loans, and your healthcare.
Congress Tries to Rewrite Birthright Citizenship After Losing at the Supreme Court
Rep. John McGuire introduced the Birthright Citizenship Clarification Act of 2026 this week, aiming to accomplish through legislation what the Supreme Court just ruled the president couldn’t do by executive order. The bill would deny automatic citizenship to children born in the U.S. to mothers who are here illegally or on a temporary basis, unless the child’s father is a citizen, national, or lawful permanent resident — while preserving long-standing exceptions for children of diplomats and foreign occupiers.
The legal path here is narrow and deliberate. In the Court’s 6-3 ruling last month, Justice Kavanaugh wrote separately that Trump’s executive order conflicted with existing federal immigration law and that Congress — not the president — would have to amend the law before restrictions like this could take effect. McGuire’s bill is built to walk through that door. But the Court’s majority opinion went further, holding that the 14th Amendment itself guarantees birthright citizenship regardless of what any statute says — which means even a perfectly drafted bill faces an uphill constitutional fight.
This is the system doing what it’s supposed to do when a branch loses in court: Congress legislating instead of the executive simply trying again by decree. Whether the law can survive contact with the Constitution’s actual text is a separate question the courts will have to answer — one that decides who counts as American from the moment they’re born, which is about as personal as policy gets for immigrant families and anyone building one here.
The Storm Hit Four States the Same Way — but Only Some Got Help
A February blizzard dumped nearly 38 inches of snow on Rhode Island in 24 hours, with 74 mph winds, two deaths, and tens of thousands without power. Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island all cleared FEMA’s damage threshold for a major disaster declaration — Rhode Island’s documented damage ran about ten times its qualifying bar. President Trump denied all four requests, totaling $227 million, the same week his administration approved more than $846 million for nine Republican-led states.
FEMA says it’s applying a tougher review standard and expects the East Coast to handle snowstorms largely on its own — even though a bipartisan spending bill passed by Congress in January explicitly said snowstorms qualify for federal relief. Politico’s own analysis found Trump has approved just 23% of disaster requests from states where the governor and both senators are Democrats, versus 89% from all-Republican states. In Wisconsin, Trump’s approval letter credited a Republican House member running for governor and left out the sitting Democratic governor who’d actually filed the request.
All four states’ governors are now appealing a decision that cuts against the government’s basic promise to help people rebuild after a disaster — a promise that isn’t supposed to depend on who you voted for, though right now that’s a live question, not a hypothetical one.
There’s Now a Trump Everything
The Palm Beach International Airport has a new name: Trump International Airport, after Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature signed off in March. President Trump celebrated on social media, predicting it would become one of the world’s great airports.
It’s part of a pattern. Since returning to office, Trump’s name has been attached to a planned class of Navy warships, a visa program for wealthy foreign investors, a government prescription-drug website, and federal children’s savings accounts. His name was also added to the U.S. Institute for Peace building, though courts blocked a separate attempt to rename the Kennedy Center after him.
None of this is illegal on its own — presidents’ names end up on things. The principle worth watching is the Constitution’s emoluments clauses, written specifically so no president’s judgment could be quietly rented: no compensation from government beyond his salary. Nothing here suggests money is changing hands. That’s the line that actually matters, and it’s the one worth watching if it ever gets close to blurry.
Someone Really Wants to Bet on Themselves
Prediction market Kalshi says it’s actively blocking political staffers from betting on races they’re personally involved in, cross-checking trades against Federal Election Commission data — but at least one campaign operative told NPR they still managed to place a bet on their own race.
The company suspended three congressional candidates in April for what it called political insider trading, including Virginia Senate independent Mark Moran, who publicly admitted betting $100 on himself specifically to get caught and draw attention to the practice — he’s now vowing to push a steep penalty on Kalshi if elected. It’s part of a bigger pattern: an unidentified trader separately made more than $400,000 betting on the ouster of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro ahead of a U.S. mission to capture him.
Prediction markets have exploded in popularity with people your age since the 2024 election, which makes this more than an inside-baseball problem: a campaign staffer betting on their own race with information you don’t have is the political version of a CEO trading before the earnings call, and enforcement here is still catching up to the money already in motion.
The GOP’s Midterm Pep Rally Comes With a Price Tag
The Republican National Committee is holding its first-ever midterm convention — dubbed “Trumpapalooza” by RNC Chair Joe Gruters — September 9-10 in Dallas. Unlike a normal convention, there’s no party business or resolutions on the agenda; it exists to rally supporters and raise campaign cash, and state parties are charging accordingly.
The California GOP is selling a $250,000 “golden VIP member” package with floor badges, hotel rooms, and concierge service, alongside $10,000 and $7,500 delegate tiers. Texas’s Denton County Republican Party is charging $20,000 for “honorary delegate” status. One state communications director called the gathering the “super bowl of politics.”
Raising money through ticketed political events is protected First Amendment activity — nothing here is against the rules. But it’s a genuinely useful window into how access and money intertwine in modern campaigns, especially with marquee races like Texas’s Ken Paxton-James Talarico Senate contest riding on the fundraising this convention is designed to generate, a fair look at what campaign finance actually looks like in practice whether or not you’ll ever buy a ticket yourself.
A College Student Is Suing Over What He’s Allowed to Say in Class
Jackson Barrick, a rising senior at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and president of its Young Americans for Freedom chapter, filed a lawsuit with the Southeastern Legal Foundation and Young America’s Foundation arguing the school’s Title IX and pronoun policies are so broadly written that students risk discipline for ordinary classroom speech — including stating there are two sexes, declining to use someone’s preferred pronouns, or objecting to biological males in women’s sports.
The university’s harassment policy flags conduct that creates an environment a “reasonable person would find… intimidating, hostile, or offensive,” and separately lists patterns of gender-based jokes as an example of prohibited conduct. Barrick isn’t asking for money — the suit seeks $1 in damages and a court order requiring the policy be rewritten.
This is a textbook First Amendment vagueness problem: when a public university writes rules so broad that students have to guess what might get them investigated, the chilling effect on speech is itself the constitutional injury, whether or not anyone is ever formally punished — and if you’re in college, or about to be, this is literally about what you’re allowed to say out loud in your own classes.
Congress Wants the WNBA to Explain Itself
Rep. August Pfluger and ten other House Republicans sent a letter to WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert demanding answers about the league’s handling of on-court treatment of Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark, citing incidents where she’s been hip-checked, poked in the eye, and struck in the throat — the latter during a June 24 game the league later upgraded to a flagrant foul with a one-game suspension. The lawmakers gave the league until July 24 to respond, and raised the possibility of civil-rights investigations if the conduct proves discriminatory.
The Indiana Fever quickly distanced itself, saying neither the team nor Clark had any involvement with the letter and learned about it only after it went public.
It’s a fair question to sit with either way: is officiating and player conduct in a private sports league really something Congress should be formally investigating, or is that a matter for the league and its players to work out themselves — a question that lands differently given how much the WNBA’s popularity has exploded with your generation, putting this fight over accountability on a court a lot of you are already watching.
Epstein’s Longtime Assistant Says She Knew Nothing. Survivors Say That’s a Lie.
Lesley Groff, Jeffrey Epstein’s executive assistant for 18 years, told the House Oversight Committee in a June 9 interview — not under oath — that she never met the girls and young women who visited Epstein, didn’t know their ages, and never paid them on his behalf. Six survivors who spoke to CNN dispute all three claims.
Survivor Marina Lacerda said Groff routinely questioned her before introductions were made, asking, “What does the girl look like? Where is she from? How old is she?” Another survivor said Groff personally helped her apply for her first passport, handling her identifying information directly. Multiple women also described Groff handing them cash in envelopes or covering tuition costs on Epstein’s behalf. Groff acknowledged in her testimony that she “may have seen” a passport at some point, but maintained she never handled the women’s documents herself.
The House committee says it’s reviewing her transcript against the evidence. The structural gap worth noticing: Groff wasn’t required to testify under oath, which is exactly the kind of loophole that lets an investigation produce statements without the legal consequences of perjury attached — leaving open the real test of whether the country’s oversight institutions can actually hold powerful people’s inner circles accountable, or whether the process mostly produces headlines without consequences.
Americans Are Losing Faith in the System — and Young People Are Leading the Way
A new Wall Street Journal-NORC poll finds just 49% of Americans think capitalism is working well, down from 60% a decade ago, while 51% now say it isn’t. Only 35% feel confident the U.S. still offers real opportunity to get ahead, and about three-quarters say billionaires and big corporations hold too much power in Washington.
Confidence in democracy itself is even lower: just 12% say it’s working very or extremely well, and 56% say it isn’t working — the worst number recorded in this poll’s history. Two-thirds of Americans say the country is in decline. And notably, younger respondents were more pessimistic than older ones, and less likely to say patriotism or tradition matters much to them personally.
There’s a strange kind of common ground buried in the numbers: nearly three-quarters of Americans, across party lines, agree the country is now so divided that government can’t solve its biggest problems. That’s worth sitting with after everything else in this report — a war without a congressional vote, disaster aid that seems to follow party lines, a permitting system finally getting modernized without a single new law. Discretion exercised without consistent rules is exactly what erodes trust like this. The fix was never complicated, just difficult: follow the written rules, the same way, every time, regardless of who’s in charge. That’s still the whole premise of the American experiment — and apparently still worth restating.
THE DAILY REPUBLIC • EDITION NO. 1 • JULY 9, 2026
