Wednesday Reads: Iran War, SCOTUS, and Other News

Good Afternoon!!

Trump is struggling to deal with his losing war in Iran. He is supposed to give a speech to the nation about it tonight, something he should have done before he started dropping bombs. He is also threatening to pull the U.S. out of NATO. Here’s the latest.

The Telegraph: Trump interview: I am strongly considering pulling out of Nato.

Donald Trump has told The Telegraph he is strongly considering pulling the United States out of Nato after it failed to join his war on Iran.

The US president labelled the alliance a “paper tiger” and said removing America from the defence treaty was now “beyond reconsideration”.

It is the strongest sign yet that the White House no longer regards Europe as a reliable defence partner following the rejection of Mr Trump’s demand that allies send warships to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Mr Trump was asked if he would reconsider the US’s membership of Nato after the conflict.

He replied: “Oh yes, I would say [it’s] beyond reconsideration. I was never swayed by Nato. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way.” [….]

Mr Trump added: “Beyond not being there, it was actually hard to believe. And I didn’t do a big sale. I just said, ‘Hey’, you know, I didn’t insist too much. I just think it should be automatic.

He is single-handedly wrecking the international alliances that have maintained relative peace since the end of WWII. The rest of the interview consisted mostly of insults to the UK and Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

“We’ve been there automatically, including Ukraine. Ukraine wasn’t our problem. It was a test, and we were there for them, and we would always have been there for them. They weren’t there for us.”

Singling out the UK, the US president rebuked Sir Keir Starmer for refusing to get involved in the American-Israeli war against Iran, suggesting that the Royal Navy was not up for the task.

“You don’t even have a navy. You’re too old and had aircraft carriers that didn’t work,” he said, referring to the state of Britain’s fleet of warships.

Asked whether the Prime Minister should spend more on defence, Mr Trump added: “I’m not going to tell him what to do. He can do whatever he wants. It doesn’t matter. All Starmer wants is costly windmills that are driving your energy prices through the roof.”

After speaking to The Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr Trump had raised the issue of withdrawing from Nato with White House aides.

The newspaper said he had made comments to Mr Rubio and others in private but had made no final decision on the future of the alliance.

No one seems to know what Trump is going to say tonight in his overdue “speech to the nation.” It seems likely he will try to bring an end to U.S. involvement, and leave the mess he created for other countries to clean up  In addition to the threat to pull out of Nato, according to the AP:

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday claimed that Iran’s president wanted a ceasefire ahead of his speech to the American people. Trump made the claim on his Truth Social website. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman sIsraid Trump’s remarks were “false and baseless.”

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, gave an interview to Al Jazeera: War on Iran: Three key takeaways from Araghchi’s interview with Al Jazeera.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has confirmed direct contact with

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says the Strait of Hormuz falls under the territorial control of Iran and Oman File, Khaled Elfiqi AP Photo

Araghchi confirmed that he had held conversations with Witkoff, Trump’s trusted envoy for peace negotiations around the world, during the current conflict.

But the Iranian foreign minister downplayed that contact.

“I receive messages from Witkoff directly, as before, and this does not mean that we are in negotiations,” he said.

“There is no truth to the claim of negotiations with any party in Iran. All messages are conveyed through the Foreign Ministry or received by it, and there are communications between security agencies,” he added.

Araghchi explained that they have never had a “good experience” negotiating with the US, referring to Washington’s decision to withdraw from the Barack Obama-era nuclear deal during Trump’s first term. The US has also twice attacked Iran during negotiations over the past nine months — in June 2025 and with the current war, which began on February 28, at a time when Oman, the mediator between the two sides, had said they were on the cusp of a breakthrough over Tehran’s nuclear programme.

“We do not have any faith that negotiations with the US will yield any results. The trust level is at zero,” Araghchi said, adding: “We don’t see honesty.”

Sounds about right. On the Strait of Hormuz:

In the interview, Araghchi argued that the waters of the Strait of Hormuz fall under the territorial control of Iran and Oman, and that once the war is over, it is these two countries who would decide the future of the waterway.

But he added that the strait should be a “peaceful waterway”.

Gulf nations, including Qatar, have, however, insisted that they be included in any talks to decide the future of the strait.

Araghchi also insisted in the interview that, from Iran’s perspective, the strait is open for ships from most nations.

“Only for the ships of those who are at war with us, this strait is closed. That is normal during war – we cannot let our enemies use our territorial waters for commerce,” he explained.

Read more at the link.

But what about Netanyahu? Will he be OK with Trump wimping out of their war?

Haretz: Netanyahu Declines to Set Timeline for Ending Iran War in pro-Trump Outlet.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel and the United States are “beyond the halfway point in terms of success” in their war against Iran, saying that the joint strikes are focusing on the country’s nuclear material.

He added that he doesn’t want to “put a schedule on” the timeline for ending the war with Iran.

In an interview with the right-wing American media outlet Newsmax, Netanyahu said the Iranian regime is “pursuing nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to American cities,” adding, “That’s what this war is about – preventing that outcome.”

The Israeli prime minister also said that the attacks have “already degraded their missile capabilities, destroyed factories, and eliminated key nuclear scientists.”

He appeared to be sending messages to Trump in the interview:

Iran “killed and maimed more Americans than any other force in recent decades,” Netanyahu told Newsmax, saying Tehran also tried to assassinate U.S. President Donald Trump. “Thousands and thousands killed and maimed in Afghanistan by Iranian IEDs. They bombed our embassies. They tried to kill President Trump twice. They’re still trying to kill him.”

According to Netanyahu, Iran has openly shown it is a threat to the West. “Most importantly, is they they chant ‘Death to America.’ They also say ‘Death to Israel.’ But they say America is the Great Satan. They’re religious zealots, and they have to wipe out Western culture led by America,” he said.

Netanyahu also said Iran is more dangerous to the United States than North Korea, China and Russia. “I don’t hear North Korea chanting ‘Death to America.’ I don’t hear China chanting … I don’t hear Russia,” he said.

I guess we’ll find out something about Trump’s plans tonight in his speech–if he makes any sense, which is unlikely.

According to Marc Caputo and Barak Ravid at Axios: Trump’s mixed messages on Iran perplex his own team.

President Trump isn’t just befuddling foreign leaders and financial markets with his mixed signals on Iran. Advisers who speak regularly with the president tell Axios they’re just as uncertain.

Why it matters: Trump’s off-the-cuff musings and Truth Social postings can have life-or-death consequences for the war, and massive implications for the market. Then the cycle restarts without any lasting clarity.

Between the lines: Some Trump aides and allies say he’s mostly improvising rather than following any clear plan.

• He likes to keep his options open, spitball with different audiences, then capitalize if he thinks he sees an opportunity, they say.
• Aides have been convinced at various points that Trump was leaning toward a major escalation, and at others that he was eager for a swift resolution. “Nobody knows in the end what he’s really thinking,” a senior adviser said.
• “They had a plan for the first week and since then, they are making the plan up as they go along,” a former U.S. official said.

Others claim it’s all by design. “That’s the plan — for you to not have a clue,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who spoke to Trump on Monday, told Axios.

Read more at Axios.

Keir Starmer

One more bit of Iran news from The Guardian: Britain to host 35 countries for strait of Hormuz talks, says Starmer.

The UK will convene 35 countries – excluding the US – to explore ways to reopen the strait of Hormuz, the vital shipping route for oil and gas that has been blocked by Iran.

Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said the next phase of discussions in the joint British and French efforts to secure the waterway would be held on Thursday, with Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, alongside international leaders….

Starmer said on Wednesday the meeting would bring together 35 countries to “assess all viable diplomatic and political measures we can take to restore freedom of navigation, guarantee the safety of trapped ships and seafarers and to resume the movement of vital commodities”.

In other news, Trump attended the Supreme Court session his morning on his efforts to end birthright citizenship. No other president has done that.

The Washington Post: Supreme Court heard birthright citizenship case with Trump in attendance.

American Civil Liberties Union Legal Director Cecillia Wang argued for the plaintiffs, immigrants using pseudonyms. The ACLU and other groups challenged Trump’s order, saying it violates the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to “all persons” born or naturalized in the United States.

In the hearing, Sauer argued that children born to parents without permanent immigration status should not be granted citizenship, upending the long-settled principle that nearly everyone born on U.S. soil is automatically a citizen.

At AP, Mark Sherman analyzed the court session: Supreme Court casts doubt on Trump’s bid to limit birthright citizenship as he attends arguments.

The Supreme Court is casting doubt on President Donald Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship in a consequential case that was magnified by Trump’s unparalleled presence in the courtroom.

Conservative and liberal justices on Wednesday questioned whether Trump’s order declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens comports with either the Constitution or federal law.

Trump, the first sitting president to attend arguments at the nation’s highest court, spent just over an hour inside the courtroom for arguments made by the Republican administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, Solicitor General D. John Sauer. The president departed shortly after lawyer Cecillia Wang began her presentation in defense of broad birthright citizenship.

Trump heard Sauer face one skeptical question after another. Justices asked about the legal basis for the order and voiced more practical concerns.

“Is this happening in the delivery room?” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked, drilling down into the logistics of how the government would actually figure out who’s entitled to citizenship and who’s not….

“How much of the debates around the 14th Amendment had anything to do with immigration?” Thomas asked, pointing out that the purpose of the amendment was to grant citizenship to Black people, including freed slaves.

The justices are hearing Trump’s appeal of a lower-court ruling from New Hampshire that struck down the citizenship restrictions, one of several courts that have blocked them. They have not taken effect anywhere in the country.

The case frames another test of Trump’s assertions of executive power that defy long-standing precedent for a court that has largely ruled in the president’s favor — but with some notable exceptions that Trump has responded to with starkly personal criticisms of the justices. A definitive ruling is expected by early summer.

Yesterday the Supreme Court voted 8-1 that conversion therapy cannot be banned in Colorado.

Chris Geidner at Law Dork: Supreme Court holds that Colorado’s conversion therapy ban “censors” talk therapists.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday held, on an 8-1 vote, that Colorado’s law banning therapists from engaging in conversion therapy with minor patients is presumptively unconstitutional as to talk therapy, deeming the law “an egregious form“ of speech regulation that almost always violates the First Amendment.

Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the court’s decision — warning that the court might have made talk therapy “effectively unregulatable” and that the “fallout could be catastrophic.“ Taking the rare step of announcing her dissent from the bench, Jackson declared that the majority got it “wrong as a matter of precedent, first principles, and history.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the court’s majority opinion, holding that lower courts had applied the wrong standard for addressing Kaley Chiles’s First Amendment challenge to the state’s ban on conversion therapy — efforts to change a patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

As with his opinion in the wedding website case in 2023, 303 Creative v. Elenis, Gorsuch waved broadly at his purpose being to protect free speech and to stop, as he wrote on Tuesday, “censorious governments.“

The proper standard to be applied in Chiles’s case, the court held, is a particularly skeptical form of strict scrutiny because the law is a content-based regulation and, further, includes “viewpoint restrictions” by banning efforts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity and allowing efforts to affirm a patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Gorsuch wrote that Chiles’s challenge would likely succeed when the case goes back to the lower courts because “Ms. Chiles seeks to engage only in speech, and as applied to her the law regulates what she may say.“

I guess the solution is public education about the research that shows conversion therapy doesn’t work. But that might not protect children in right wing religious families, especially if they are home schooled.

A few more stores of possible interest:

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Artemis II commander, from left, Victor Glover, Artemis II pilot, Christina Koch, Artemis II mission specialist, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, Artemis II mission specialist, right, in a group photograph as they visit NASA’s Artemis II SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft. (Bill Ingalls/NASA via AP)

AP: NASA begins fueling rocket to launch astronauts on the first lunar trip in half a century.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA began fueling its moon rocket Wednesday for humanity’s first lunar trip in more than half a century, aiming for an evening liftoff with four astronauts.

Tensions were high as hydrogen fuel started flowing into the rocket hours ahead of the planned launch. Dangerous hydrogen leaks erupted during a countdown test earlier this year, forcing a lengthy flight delay.

By mid-morning, no leaks had been reported.

The launch team needs to load more than 700,000 gallons of fuel (2.6 million liters) into the 32-story Space Launch System rocket on the pad before the Artemis II crew can board.

Read more at the link. I had no idea this was happening until I got a message from JJ this moring.

The New York Times: Federal Judge Approves Trump Effort to Obtain List of Jews From Penn.

The Trump administration was within its rights to demand that the University of Pennsylvania turn over information about Jews on campus as part of a federal investigation into discrimination at the school, a federal judge decided Tuesday.

The government’s investigation had united Penn leaders with Jewish students and faculty members as they opposed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s subpoena. Many on campus drew parallels between the government’s approach and methods deployed in Nazi Germany.

But the Trump administration has said that its request was typical for discrimination investigations to seek potential victims and witnesses, and Judge Gerald J. Pappert of Philadelphia’s Federal District Court agreed on Tuesday. He gave Penn until May 1 to comply with the administration’s subpoena, though the ruling appeared unlikely to quell the debates around how the administration has pressured top American universities.

Judge Pappert, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, appeared to hint at the discomfort that the government’s subpoena had prompted and at the accusations that the E.E.O.C. had gone too far with its tactics, especially a demand for information tied to groups “related to the Jewish religion.”

“Though ineptly worded, the request had an understandable purpose — to obtain in a narrowly tailored way, as opposed to seeking information on all university employees, information on individuals in Penn’s Jewish community who could have experienced or witnessed antisemitism in the workplace,” Judge Pappert wrote in his 32-page opinion, issued three weeks after he heard oral arguments.

I don’t know. This sounds pretty creepy to me.

One more from Shawn McCreesh at The New York Times (gift link): In South Dakota, Neighbors Feel Sorry for Kristi Noem’s Husband.

That couldn’t be him, could it?

The cartoonishly large breasts. The pink spandex. The come-hither stare.

Byron Noem

“Must be A.I.,” a burly cattle rancher named Kevin Ruesink said as he inspected pictures of his neighbor Bryon Noem that had been published by The Daily Mail on Tuesday morning. The rancher was playing pinochle in the back of a convenience store with five other men in the tiny town of Castlewood, S.D., not far from the Noem family farm.

These men all knew Bryon Noem as the nice, tall insurance salesman who married Kristi Arnold, the town beauty queen who grew up to be governor. But now there were these pictures.

The rancher squinted at them with a mixture of suspicion and pity. “I grew up playing ball with Bryon,” he said. “I’ve never known him to be part of stuff like that. I don’t believe that at all.”

The British tabloid report on Tuesday was the latest and most dramatic development in the saga of Kristi Noem, who was sacked as homeland security chief earlier this month, the first Trump cabinet member to get the old heave-ho this term. She quickly put out a statement saying that she was “devastated” by the images of her husband and that “the family was blindsided by this.”

In response to multiple requests for an interview, Mr. Noem wrote in a text message on Tuesday: “I will at some point. Today is not the day. I appreciate your heart.”

While the pictures of Ms. Noem’s husband with what appear to be enormous inflated balloons under his spandex shirt ricocheted across the internet, becoming a political punchline for her many, many enemies, the reaction back on the proverbial ranch was a little more … tenderhearted.

Those are the stories that caught my attention this morning. What stories have you been following?