Last week, House Democrats voted on an amendment that would have cut $3.3 billion in annual US military aid to Israel from a State Department funding bill. The amendment was brought to the floor by Rep. Thomas Massie, an outgoing Republican from Kentucky. It failed 314-104, but 103 Democrats — nearly half of the House Democratic caucus — supported it, signaling a significant shift in the party’s longstanding support for aid to Israel.

In 2024, a similar vote came up in the House to cut military aid to Israel. Then, just 37 House Democrats voted for the measure. Now, two years later, 103 House Democrats voted to cut funding. That shift in support was accelerated after the October 7 Hamas attacks and Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza, which has killed large numbers of Palestinian civilians. The debate is also playing out in Democratic primaries across the country. In New York and Colorado, Democratic socialist candidates who have sharply criticized Israel and opposed continued US military aid recently won House primaries.

Historically, Jewish Americans have overwhelmingly identified with and voted for the Democratic Party, while Democratic lawmakers have generally supported Israel and US military assistance to the country. In 2016, the Obama administration signed a 10-year memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Israel, committing the US to seek $38 billion in military assistance for fiscal years 2019 through 2028. Congress must vote to approve this funding, so the shift in Democratic support of Israel could have real consequences.

There is still a very strong support for Israel among many House Democrats, but the shifting views are notable. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries opposed the Massie amendment, arguing that it was overly broad and could jeopardize humanitarian assistance. But in a letter addressed to his House colleagues he also called for a “major reset” in US policy toward what he described as Israel’s “far-right Netanyahu government.”

Today, Explained host Sean Rameswaram spoke with Democratic Rep. Brad Schneider, who represents Illinois’s 10th Congressional District, and remains a strong supporter of Israel.

Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify. 

Can you walk us through last week’s vote? You voted against the measure to cut aid to Israel, and a lot of your colleagues obviously did not. How did that play out for you?

Growing up in the ’60s, ’70s, and for the last 65 years, I fundamentally believe that the US-Israel relationship is important. I also believe that the aspiration for peace in the Middle East, not just between Israelis and Palestinians, but broadly throughout the region, is something that is in the United States’s interest and the interest of the people in the region. So this is not a new issue to me, and it’s something I thought long and hard about. 

Tom Massie doesn’t believe any of that. His intentions with this amendment were anything but pure. It was hastily crafted and poorly written. And one of the biggest issues with it is not only does it [not] address this 10-year memorandum of understanding, something negotiated by President Obama eight years ago, but there are also two years left on the MOU. 

It was a messaging bill and nothing more, and it was a negative message. I voted no because I think if we’re going to move toward peace, we need to do so in a constructive way. A lot of my colleagues were saying we need to send a message to the Netanyahu government.

“I have to hold onto that optimism for the prospects of peace because the alternative is too dark.”

I’ve been extremely critical of this government, their failure to address the settler violence in the West Bank, the failure to plan for a day-after in Gaza following what was a horrific war. If we’re going to move towards peace, if we’re going to find a path where Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side and the region can have the peace they deserve. Because we’re not just talking about Israelis and Palestinians; there’s progress being made between Lebanon and Israel in giving Lebanon, the people of Lebanon, the liberty and freedom they all deserve. 

Can I ask you if you still take money from AIPAC? And if so, how much?

I appreciate the support I get from people who care about the issues that I advocate for. So people who are pro-Israel, pro-US-Israel relationship are likely to support me because I’m pro-US-Israel, pro-US-Israel relationship. I’m also pro-addressing gun safety and reducing gun violence in this country. So I get the support of those groups. The support I get doesn’t determine my positions. I think my positions determine who supports me. 

Has your position on Israel shifted at all since October 7th, or at any point in your political career? And if so, can you tell us how?

So my position hasn’t changed because I’ve always been committed to promoting peace between Israelis and Palestinians and finding a path where both can live together, which I believe ultimately is two states: a Jewish democratic state of Israel, and a Palestinian state living side by side. My frustration with the current Israeli government has grown and continues to grow. Every conversation I have with them, whether it’s the US ambassador to Israel, whom I’ve had the privilege of working with many times, or my meetings with Prime Minister Netanyahu. I’ve had an engagement with the prime minister going back now for almost 30 years. But in the last several years, every single conversation I have with them talks about the need to address settler violence, the need to get humanitarian aid.

One of the things that I am proud of and will say loudly and proudly is that immediately after October 7th, as the war began, my team and I worked hard to push for humanitarian aid into Gaza to do everything we could to make sure that the civilians who were always caught in the middle of any war wouldn’t suffer more than they did. And the suffering was horrific. And I did challenge Israel when they made what I’ll call ill-conceived, ill-advised, in some cases illegal decisions to deprive humanitarian relief from entering Gaza. We pushed hard, and we worked with the Egyptians to get the Rafah crossing open. We pushed the Israelis to open the Karam Shalom crossing. And to not just get aid to those crossings, but get aid into and across the territories within Gaza.

Why are you so optimistic about the situation? 

I am always going to be optimistic. I have to hold onto that optimism for the prospects of peace because the alternative is too dark. And let’s separate the issue for folks living in the region and the folks living here. And for the Israelis and Palestinians, these are two peoples who are totally traumatized — traumatized not just over the last couple of years, but for decades. So I recognize the trauma that Israelis have and are experiencing, and I recognize the trauma that the Palestinians have and are experiencing. And that’s part of what I feel is my obligation: to hold onto that optimism and speak to a better future and work to try to find ways to bring the parties on both sides of the issue together to make the hard choices and take the risk to get to a path to peace.

So the reason I’m holding onto optimism — and it’s not 24/7; I have my moments when I am down and where I feel like the hill we’re climbing is just too steep — is you take a deep breath and you dig deep, and you say, I can’t give up on hoping and working towards peace because otherwise peace is never going to happen. And I want to find people who are like-minded.

And that is not just on the Israeli side of the equation. We have to find people on the Palestinian side, and for those on the Palestinian side, we have to find Israelis. And I meet, and I spend time with them on a regular basis. They come to my office. When I’m in the region, I talk to them. We have to strengthen and empower those voices who believe that peace will only come when the Israelis see the Palestinians as a people worthy of engagement and a shared future, and the Palestinians see the Israeli as a people worthy of engagement and a shared future, and recognize that until they get there, there’s no future for either side. We’ve got to have a path where both are pointing in the same direction.

There was an unintentionally revealing moment in acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing last week. After Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) asked Blanche whether he and President Donald Trump are friends, the leader of the United States Department of Justice replied, “I’m his lawyer,” before correcting himself and saying he “was his lawyer.”

Blanche previously defended Trump in three criminal cases brought while the president was out of office, but he is emphatically not supposed to be Trump’s lawyer right now. As acting attorney general — Blanche currently leads the DOJ because the attorney general’s job is vacant and Blanche is the Senate-confirmed deputy attorney general (DAG) — Blanche’s client is the United States, not the person who happens to occupy the White House. 

But it’s easy to see why he misspoke: Blanche has largely acted as Trump’s hammer since he was confirmed as the DOJ’s No. 2 official, overseeing numerous prosecutions of Trump’s perceived enemies. Now Trump wants to promote him to the DOJ’s top job — a sign of Trump’s confidence in his former criminal defense lawyer turned personal enforcer.

It’s unusual for a president to put his own defense lawyer in such a powerful position — indeed, it’s unusual for a president to have a criminal defense lawyer at all. But Trump has a long string of attorneys who’ve defended him and his companies against an equally long string of criminal allegations ranging from tax fraud, to falsifying business records, to illegally taking classified documents, to charges arising from his failed attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election. 

And he’s put at least five of those criminal defense lawyers in top federal jobs. 

Trump’s decision to turn much of his criminal legal team into powerful government officials matters for two big reasons. The first is that two members of that team, Blanche and Solicitor General John Sauer, are leaders within the Justice Department. Next to the military, there is no more fearsome government institution than the DOJ, which has the power to arrest people and try them for federal crimes. 

The DOJ is supposed to exercise this authority with restraint — and often with restraints imposed by the Constitution itself — but Blanche has used the Justice Department’s power against Trump’s political enemies who appear to have committed no crime and removed constraints on Trump and his Justice Department, all while Sauer has worked consistently to convince the Supreme Court to remove other constraints on Trump.

Meanwhile, three of Trump’s former criminal lawyers, Emil Bove, Justin Smith, and Matthew Schwartz, now have lifetime appointments as US Court of Appeals judges, placing them one rung on the judicial ladder down from the Supreme Court. The judiciary, of course, is the branch of government that is supposed to prevent the president from breaking the law, so every Trump loyalist appointed to this branch weakens the remaining legal constraints on Trump and his administration.

Trump, of course, isn’t the only president to place close confidants in the Justice Department or the federal bench. President John F. Kennedy famously named his brother attorney general. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Abe Fortas, who represented him in a 1948 election dispute, to the Supreme Court in 1965.

But Trump’s decision to place someone willing to pursue his personal vendettas in charge of the Justice Department is, at the very least, a break with post-Watergate norms established to prevent the DOJ from becoming a political weapon. And Fortas, who resigned in disgrace after fewer than four years on the bench, is more of a cautionary tale than a model of good governance.

Although the current Supreme Court is dominated by conservative Republicans, some of these justices do break with Trump on questions that divide the Republican Party — such as whether Trump should unilaterally impose high tariffs on many nations. But if Trump gets to turn his personal cronies into justices, that could change quickly. A judiciary controlled by MAGA loyalists means that all remaining checks on Trump’s authority could end. Many of his former-lawyers-turned-appointees are already working to make an unchecked Trump administration a reality.

How are Trump’s former personal lawyers already reshaping American legal norms?

Smith, who worked on the Trump v. United States immunity case, was confirmed last month. And Schwartz, who worked on the false documents case that led to Trump’s conviction, joined the bench last week. So there’s not much to say about these two men’s record in federal office — yet.

But Blanche, Bove, and Sauer have all displayed ruthless cunning in their efforts to advance Trump and his causes.

Blanche has been DAG since March 2025, a role that oversees the federal government’s criminal prosecutions and its 93 regional US attorneys’ offices. He’s led the entire Justice Department since April, after former Attorney General Pam Bondi — another of Trump’s former personal lawyers — left office.

So Blanche oversaw several dubious federal prosecutions targeting people Trump perceives as enemies, including criminal proceedings targeting former FBI Director James Comey and current New York Attorney General Letitia James. There’s also evidence that Blanche has played an unusually direct role in the Justice Department’s decision to bring meritless charges against prominent Democrats.

In May 2025, for example, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, a Democrat, showed up at an ICE detention facility in his New Jersey city and asked to tour it. He was briefly let inside the gate, where he was confronted by about a dozen law enforcement officers and asked to leave, which he did.

But then one of these officers received a phone call. A video, later submitted to a federal court, shows the officer turning to his colleagues after the call and announcing, “We are arresting the mayor right now, per the deputy attorney general of the United States.” That deputy attorney general, of course, was Blanche. (In a September court filing, DOJ confirmed that officers arrested Baraka “after consulting with the Deputy Attorney General.”)

Yet, despite Blanche’s apparent decision to personally order Baraka’s arrest, the DAG forgot to check whether Baraka had actually done something that could support criminal charges. The mayor was only charged with misdemeanor trespassing, and those charges were dismissed two weeks later. At the court hearing formally dropping these charges, a federal magistrate judge admonished prosecutors for “using the immense power of the government to pursue weak cases or to make examples without sufficient cause.”

Blanche also unsuccessfully attempted to establish Trump’s $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization fund,” which would have been used to distribute money to Trump’s allies — including, potentially, Trump supporters who participated in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. Although the fund appears dead after it received bipartisan pushback in Congress, a DOJ press release announcing the fund said it was “established” by the attorney general, a role performed by Blanche, and that the fund would be administered by five people chosen by Blanche.

Before Trump took office, Bove was Blanche’s law partner. Shortly before Bove joined the bench, he briefly served as principal associate deputy attorney general — essentially the DAG’s top deputy, which meant that Bove was Blanche’s right-hand man. In that role, he was often described as Trump’s “enforcer.” 

Bove spent only about half a year as Blanche’s lieutenant, but he managed to spark a mini-revolt in one of the Justice Department’s most prestigious offices during his short tenure. After Bove ordered the DOJ to dismiss corruption charges against then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams “without prejudice,” a maneuver that would allow the charges to be reinstated if Adams did not cooperate with the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, seven federal prosecutors resigned rather than comply with Bove’s order. 

One was Danielle Sassoon, a former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative icon. Another, Hagan Scotten, wrote in his resignation letter to Bove that “I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.” Scotten clerked for Republican Chief Justice John Roberts and for future Republican Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Meanwhile, a whistleblower complaint by another former DOJ lawyer claims that Bove said, in a meeting about a court decision halting some deportations, “that D.O.J. would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such order.”

Trump appointed Bove to the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit last September. Federal appeals courts typically spend months deciding cases, so his tenure on the Third Circuit has thus far been less eventful than his time at the DOJ. But there are early signs that he remains loyal to Trump even after moving into an independent branch of government. Bove attended a Trump rally in December, a highly unusual move for judges who are supposed to remain nonpartisan. And the background image on his iPhone is reportedly an image of a defiant Trump raising a fist, or at least it was months after he joined the bench.

That leaves Sauer, who, as solicitor general, is tasked with defending federal government programs in the Supreme Court. That includes the Trump tariffs that the Supreme Court struck down last winter, and Trump’s unconstitutional attempt to strip many newborn Americans of their citizenship.

Despite these losses, Sauer has an impressive winning record before the Supreme Court, largely because the Court is controlled by six Republicans who are highly sympathetic to Trump and his agenda. This is, after all, the same Court that said that Trump may use the powers of the presidency to commit crimes, after Sauer argued as much. 

Sauer has been particularly effective in persuading the Republican justices to block lower court rulings against Trump on the Court’s “shadow docket,” a once rarely used mix of emergency motions and other matters that became a routine part of Supreme Court litigation during Trump’s first term.

So Trump has taken several of his personal lawyers and transformed them into some of the most well-credentialed — and in some cases, the most powerful — figures in the legal profession. Thus far, the evidence suggests that these individuals remain loyal to Trump, even when they move into jobs that are supposed to be nonpartisan. Three of them already have lifetime appointments. 

Any nation governed by the rule of law must have government officials who will obey whatever constraints the law imposes — whether they be federal agency leaders who follow the law out of a sense of duty, or judges who rein in executive branch leaders who refuse to do so. Institutions like the Department of Justice also depend on informal norms, many of which are a response to similar abuses of power during the Nixon administration, that have long constrained federal prosecutors.

But Trump’s DOJ is often actively hostile to these norms, and the growing legal power of Trump’s personal lawyers is just the latest example. Their steady reshaping of the judiciary clears the way for a federal government that is not constrained by anything.

Move over, Maine. A new Democratic primary has taken the crown as the country’s most dysfunctional.

In Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race, a crowded field of establishment-tied Democrats has been splitting the vote for months, giving democratic socialist Francesca Hong’s energetic campaign a lane to the nomination.

Recently, fearing Hong would lose the general election (and spooked by a seeming Republican effort to boost her chances), some in the party tried to coalesce around one candidate to stop her: lieutenant governor Sara Rodriguez. 

But that attempt disastrously backfired last week, when it turned out Rodriguez’s campaign had badly mismanaged its funds. It’s still not clear what happened, but the situation was so messy that she quit the race.

With Rodriguez gone, the two leading contenders appeared to be Hong and Mandela Barnes, the former lieutenant governor who was Democrats’ losing nominee for a Senate race in 2022. 

Yet, party bigwigs were unhappy with those options and coaxed a candidate who had already dropped out — Milwaukee county executive David Crowley — back into the race, even though the primary is only three weeks away. 

This weekend, Governor Tony Evers endorsed Crowley in a last-ditch attempt to stop Hong (and, apparently, Barnes) from winning the nomination. 

The chaos is all the more shocking, because the state party, until recently, was often cited as a national model for Democrats, with leaders and candidates successfully coordinating over multiple cycles in a long-term plan to undo years of Republican dominance. 

I asked Jessie Opoien, a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, to walk me through this dizzying sequence of events. How did the party find itself in this mess? Is Hong on a glide path to primary victory? And what awaits in the general election? Our conversation, which has been condensed and edited, is below.

Democrats began this race with optimism. Now, they’re a lot more worried.

Back before this primary began, what was the situation of the Wisconsin Democratic Party and the political status quo in the state?

Democrats were feeling more optimistic heading into this primary. We have a lot of really, really tight races here. But if you look at the past three state Supreme Court races, you had liberal candidates just really blowing it out of the water, no matter how much Republican money came in. Democrats came out feeling pretty happy about those races. 

Another significant element is new legislative maps that got passed. This would be the second state election where they’re running on those new maps. 

So, for the first time in 15-ish years, Democrats are actually within striking distance of getting a majority or, at least, taking one of the chambers — or getting closer to the point where they’re not completely irrelevant in the capitol.

And the congressional map, which gives Republicans a 6-2 advantage, hasn’t changed yet — but that’s something Democrats could do if they win a trifecta?

Yes, and some of the candidates running for governor have made that a priority.

How was Governor Evers viewed after his two terms?

We look at the Marquette University poll as our gold standard for approval ratings, and Evers is by far the most popular statewide politician they’ve polled, pretty much in the time of their existence. He’s been above 50 percent for pretty much all of his two terms.

That being said, there has been a little bit of friction, especially toward the end of the legislative session. The state had this large projected budget surplus that no one could agree on what to do with it. Evers and the Republican leaders of the legislature proposed this deal that included some tax relief and some school funding — and basically got no support from Democrats in the legislature. They’ve probably gotten past it, but you had people starting to become a little bit more willing to be publicly critical of him. 

The leading contenders to succeed Tony Evers

So, after Evers announces he isn’t running for another term, how does the race to succeed him kick off?

Early on, I think everyone was expecting the attorney general, Josh Kaul, to get in. He would have been the clear frontrunner, and we wouldn’t be in the situation we’re in right now. [Kaul eventually decided not to run.]

Sara Rodriguez, the lieutenant governor, was the first person to get in, but she did not come in as an automatic frontrunner. 

Mandela Barnes took a little bit longer to get in, but he did. He’s the former lieutenant governor who lost a Senate race against Ron Johnson in 2022.

David Crowley, Milwaukee county executive: I think everyone expected his campaign to take off more at the beginning than it did. Milwaukee has had some big moments while he’s been in office. I think people expected him to be possibly a frontrunner early on, and that didn’t necessarily materialize. 

Others who got in were state senator Kelda Roys and Joel Brennan, the Department of Administration secretary under Evers. And Missy Hughes, a state economic development official.

And state representative Francesca Hong, who came in very much as an underdog candidate, but whose campaign blasted off and gained a lot of traction in a way that, I think, a lot of people didn’t see coming.

Tell me what you’ve seen on the ground about Francesca Hong’s campaign.

She is absolutely running as a democratic socialist, but she’s talking to Trump voters about affordability and being left behind. She was one of the first ones to jump on the anti-data center sentiment. “Jump on” was probably the wrong word, because she was there before the publicity; it didn’t appear to be an opportunistic move.

I started noticing back in December that something felt different with her, just in terms of the fundraising events she was doing. She did a ramen pop-up, bringing back her restaurant specialties. [Hong was a chef and co-owned a restaurant.] She did these small and intimate but unique events, like karaoke and bingo — bringing people to do fun things, things you don’t necessarily see a candidate engaging in themselves

My anecdotal observation is: I see people that I went to high school with or that I know from my non-political life who are talking about her campaign. I just don’t see that, you know, ever, anywhere else.

When the Marquette polls came out early this year, it was really remarkable just how split the field was; the first place candidate had just 11 percent in one poll. There’s been very little polling lately, but the narrative until recently was that it was shaping up to be a three-way race between Hong, Barnes, and Rodriguez, right?

I think it was starting to feel that way.  

Mandela Barnes, it was harder to measure. He came in with the most name recognition, having been on the ballot as lieutenant governor and for the Senate race. More people had an opinion about him, because they at least had heard of him.

With Sara Rodriguez — there wasn’t a lot of public polling for us to look at. But, then, there started to be an attitude behind the scenes of: Is the frontrunner going to be a democratic socialist, and do Democrats want that? And if they don’t, do they need to start organizing around one candidate?

You started to see that around Sara Rodriguez. The first candidate who dropped out, Missy Hughes, got behind her the day she dropped out. 

Fundraising reports were due in a few weeks, and Sara Rodriguez announced she was going to put up a million-dollar ad buy. In this race, with this many candidates, no one has a lot of money, so a million dollars would have been a big deal. And she had an independent group that was putting ads up for her, too. 

So, everyone was like, “Oh wow, the momentum’s going in her direction, the money’s there, she’s picking up endorsements.” Then, David Crowley got out, pretty much right when that ad buy was announced, and endorsed her. And then, everything started falling apart. 

The Sara Rodriguez disaster and the David Crowley switcheroo

So, what happened to the Rodriguez campaign?

This was pretty much all starting last week. Sara Rodriguez has got this ad buy that’s supposed to be going up on TV. And we had heard some people starting to raise questions about, where is it?

Sunday night, about 9:30, Sara Rodriguez’s campaign puts out a press release, and they say that they fired her campaign manager, because they’ve discovered financial mismanagement. 

On Monday, she holds a press conference in her Madison office. Basically, she has no idea how much money she has, and the ad buy she thought she placed, there’s no money for it. She said she didn’t know if this was something done on purpose or if it was mistakes that were made. 

I asked how much she thought she had on hand when they made the million dollar buy. She said $1.5 million. So, we’re talking about maybe a difference of a million dollars.

So, it goes from “this is the candidate into the strongest position” to “this candidate maybe has some money, but we don’t really know how much, and also she’s got these debts.”

She was committed to staying in [at first]. But, it sounds like, as she continued to dig into whatever the problem was. everyone around her was saying her campaign was over, and she finally decided that was the case on Friday morning.

And then, we get this switcheroo.

Yeah, then, my colleague, Matt Smith, reported this first, but we all started talking to Democratic sources who told us there was an effort to try and get David Crowley back in the race. 

Because there was a question of, when Crowley dropped out and endorsed Rodriguez, was he brought in under false pretenses? I think he would not have gotten out, obviously, if he had a clearer picture.

So, that transitioned to: He’s only been out for a few days; he could get back in. 

And the key element that made this more of a story than just him getting back in was now having the governor’s endorsement. 

Had Evers endorsed Rodriguez before that?

No, he had not endorsed anyone. He had said throughout the race he wasn’t planning on getting involved, but that he might at some point.

So, can David Crowley, a candidate who was apparently polling nowhere, who actually quit the race — can he come back into contention with just three weeks left?

That’s a really good question. They’ve got to get on the air. They’ve got to get the money. If Evers would like to transfer over the hundreds of thousands to a million dollars he’s got in his campaign account, that would be a big help to David Crowley, or if unions who were backing Sara Rodriguez or hadn’t made an endorsement yet decided to get behind him. 

But he was polling below 5 percent. So, I don’t know. I just keep reminding myself, I guess, that all of this is occurring within the bubble of people who are actively paying attention to it right now. While the primary seems like it’s tomorrow, it is three weeks away, and there are many people who have not been paying attention. 

Why not Mandela Barnes?

Now, here’s the big question I’ve been confused by.

If the establishment is so worried about Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist, winning the nomination and losing the general, wouldn’t the thing to do be to coalesce around Mandela Barnes, who seems to be the other leading contender? Barnes had run before and lost, but it was in a tough cycle, in 2022, and it wasn’t by that much.

Instead, there’s what seems to me like a cockamamie scheme to get a candidate who had already quit the race to come back in weeks before election day. And that will make it a three-way race, which many people think will make it easier for Hong to win, with a plurality of the vote. So, what’s going on here?

You know, I don’t know if anyone has figured out the answer to that. 

Before Mandela Barnes even got in the race, there were a not insignificant number of Democrats who were urging him not to. It’s a question, I guess, of whether you think he got really close to beating Ron Johnson and just got out-campaigned, or if you think he came really close on something that he should have been able to pull off. He had money left over.

He got attacked in 2022 for some positions on policing that he had. So, is the main concern that he, like Hong, is too far left to win? 

I think it probably does have a lot to do with the policing stuff. If a Democrat is willing to say that they’re concerned about the electability issue, they usually point pretty quickly to the police rhetoric. 

Mandela distanced himself from that more in ’22, and he’s definitely distancing himself from it now, in a way that we haven’t seen from Francesca Hong.

But, just the fact that there’s a photo of him holding a t-shirt that says “abolish ICE.” These things exist, and they made for good campaign ad fodder in ’22. 

The other thing I’ve heard, that it is hard to assess the veracity of, is that he just hasn’t been performing as well in internal polls [of the general election] as people had hoped he would.

One of the Dem sources I spoke with on Friday who was pushing Crowley to get back said, “This was Mandela Barnes’s race to lose, and he’s been losing it.”

Tom Tiffany and the general election

Tell me about the general election and the presumptive GOP nominee, Rep. Tom Tiffany. What kind of Republican is he, and how formidable an opponent is he likely to be?

In Congress, he tends to rank as one of the more conservative Republicans — certainly within Wisconsin’s delegation. There was trepidation early on from Republicans, as he was getting ready to get into the race, I think, specifically about his positions on abortion. 

But, he didn’t have to deal with a primary, because he got the Trump endorsement and that got his opponents out of the way pretty quickly. So, he’s had a few months to just run some biographical ads that make him look like a folksy guy from Northern Wisconsin. They’re good ads, they’re him and his family, him and a dairy barn. He’s talking about things like data centers and home affordability. 

Wisconsin is an archetypal swing state. It voted for Trump two out of three times. What’s the current partisan mood there? Does a blue wave look plausible? 

If you look at polls, Trump’s popularity here is not good. Tariffs continue to be a question here, especially for farmers. I think last time we saw a poll, inflation, jobs, health insurance, education, those were the top concerns. The national economy, I imagine, will bear some weight here.

But, I expect it to be a close election. Democrats have been very optimistic because of the national environment, but realistically, Wisconsin is a lot closer than that. We elect Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin, we elect Donald Trump and Joe Biden. We’re not predictable.

This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.

President Donald Trump seemed visibly irked when asked about his plans for Iran on Tuesday. “You don’t know anything,” he snapped at a reporter who said Iran showed no signs of deescalating. 

You have to forgive the man his vexation — he is in something of a bind. The war in Iran, never popular to begin with, has only become more of a lemon since a tenuous ceasefire collapsed earlier this month. In the two weeks since, Iran has bombarded targets across the Middle East with missiles and drone strikes. The onslaught badly damaged US bases and, just last week, killed three American soldiers’ lives.

Now Iran and its allies, metaphorically drunk on their recent successes (…alcohol is technically illegal in Iran!), appear to be revving for a new round of attacks. Iran launched strikes on Kuwait, Jordan, and Bahrain this week, reportedly targeting both US bases and civilian infrastructure. And on Monday, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia also threatened to shut down a second key waterway that could further strain global oil markets. 

The world is running out of soldiers

The latest US casualties are a grim reminder that — for all the talk of drones and precision missiles — wars are still fought by actual, human people. 

But major military powers are running short on soldiers: The US, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan have all recently struggled to recruit troops. And the forces driving that shortage aren’t easily reversed. 

For starters, falling birth rates and aging populations have left many countries with fewer military-age adults. Being the right age is also only half of the equation. In the US, factors including weight, drug use and physical or mental health conditions would disqualify an estimated three-quarters of young Americans from military service.

Then there’s the military’s image problem: Polls show that young people around the world are becoming less willing to fight for their respective countries. And young Americans, in particular, have more negative views of both the military and the war in Iran than do their parents or grandparents.

There is another way to fill the ranks, of course…but it isn’t popular. The US ended its draft in 1973, and most Western militaries have similarly transitioned to all-volunteer forces. If the US did ever need to restart its draft, both the politics and the logistics could prove formidable. 

One link for later

➨ Treat yourself to a froyo. The go-to dessert of my misspent 20s is apparently very much back in vogue. But this time, it’s less about the zany flavors and maximalist toppings and more about wellness buzzwords like…protein and probiotics. Hmmmm. 

Before you go…

• Did you know…that carrots don’t actually improve your vision? The myth originated as part of a World War II propaganda campaign to conceal Britain’s development of radar technology.
• Today’s trivia: How many countries are in North America? Don’t look it up — just guess! (Our daily trivia generally comes from Vox’s daily crossword, but today’s tidbit comes from my colleague Sean Rameswaram.) 
• Yesterday’s trivia: Yesterday I asked you to name the Mesoamerican civilization that spoke Nahuatl. That would be the Aztecs — though 1.5 million people in central Mexico still speak the language now.