I click links when I want to, opening tabs, yeah, yeah ...

Ed: Precisely. However, even if we just plowed through and finished it over the summer, Republicans would likely still have sustained major losses. Second-term midterms are always tough, and especially so when presidents enact such bold agendas as Trump pursued in this term. Voters would still have signaled that it was too much too soon, and the war wasn't the only one of those policies where costs got front-loaded before benefits. Tariffs were another. 

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WSJ: Trump’s move is a sudden reversal. In recent days, the president had told top aides and counterparts that he was open to Vance restarting talks with Iran and had empowered him to negotiate. ...

Vance had been the administration’s top Iran negotiator for months, but his role took on more urgency after the vice president blamed the war for Republicans’ disastrous midterms performance. Even before the conflict began, Vance argued internally that the U.S. should find a diplomatic solution to rid Iran of its nuclear program instead of joining Israel in an all-out bombing campaign.

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Trump’s announcement jumbles his current Iran strategy, which has already changed course several times since first launching the war in February. In recent days, he was considering three options: resuming airstrikes, maintaining the blockade on Iranian trade, or making a deal. He chose to tighten the blockade while allowing Vance to pursue an agreement to end the war.

But the president, who has claimed victory against Iran many times, for now seems willing to continue the military operation indefinitely without a diplomatic process in place.

Ed: The WSJ took its time reporting on the significance of Trump's announcement, and still got this upside-down. Trump's announcement keeps his current strategy in place rather than allow Vance to 'jumble' it up. Vance has been pursuing the "diplomatic process" for months, and kept getting the runaround from the IRGC. The Iranian regime violated the Memorandum of Understanding as soon as the ink was dry on it. The reason Trump doesn't need "a diplomatic process in place" is because the IRGC has no intention of negotiating in good faith in the first place. 

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Ed: This is what happens when a VP gets out over his skis and creates a conflict with a president. As I wrote earlier, Trump just dropped Vance into a political trap. And there's not much Vance can do about it either, since his fortunes rely entirely on Trump, which is not true for Ron DeSantis or as much for Marco Rubio. 

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Noah Rothman at NRO: On Wednesday afternoon, the Wall Street Journal caught wind of JD Vance’s latest contribution to Donald Trump’s mounting headaches. Convinced, as he claims to be, that the conflict with Iran is the beginning and end of the GOP’s troubles, the vice president is reportedly open to a face-to-face meeting with Mohsen Rezaei, a former IRGC commander and secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.

Rezaei insisted the reports were not true, but the president must have taken the trial balloon seriously. Within hours of the Journal’s reporting, Trump announced that Vance had been taken off the Iran portfolio. ...

In a single stroke, the president didn’t just withdraw his support for Vance’s diagnosis of what ails the GOP. He also made his vice president the face of his party’s blindness to what voters perceive to be this White House’s own rank corruption. Hardly ideal conditions on which to mount a presidential bid.

Trump may not be deliberately setting his vice president up for failure, but the Journal’s reporting suggests that the president has had his fill of Vance’s efforts to feather his own political nest by undermining the war effort.

Ed: Even before this, I was fairly certain that Vance would wait for another cycle to run for the GOP presidential nomination, especially after this midterm debacle. Republicans will want a chance of direction, not a "stay the course" Trump-connected option, after this massive vote of no-confidence. After today, Vance may count off the weeks left before he can temporarily retire and retool. 

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Ed: As Ferris Bueller once warned: Life comes at you fast ...

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Ed: Are those options on the table? Sure. Will Trump use them? Not unless it becomes absolutely necessary. The blockade is what's working, and the other kinetic actions wind up being a distraction from the IRGC's road to collapse. 

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Dept of Homeland Security: The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) broke the record for the highest number of deportations and arrests in any fiscal year in Fiscal Year 2026 (FY26), with more than 491,000 immigration arrests and more than 483,000 deportations.

In FY26, ICE carried out 483,200 deportations, which broke the record for the highest number of deportations in the agency’s history. This surpasses the previous record held by FY25, which saw 442,640 deportations.

FY26’s deportation total is almost the same as all three full fiscal years under the Biden Administration (FY22, FY23, and FY24) combined, at 486,000. FY26’s total is also more than eight times the number of deportations in Biden’s first fiscal year, as FY21 saw just over 59,000 deportations.

Ed: As we have explained for the past two years, we didn't need a new law. We just needed a new president. Even with these numbers, though, DHS has a long way to go. Trump indicated that he might be willing to cut a deal on immigration with Democrats next year. This may end up being the apex of enforcement. Prevention, however, is still very much part of Trump's plans ...

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... and she ruled out using force. Mexico's method is to walk alongside caravans, offer rides home or papers to stay, and let the march thin out.

Ed: As long as they stay on Mexico's side of the border, it doesn't matter what policy Sheinbaum adopts; that's her business. All that matters is results. If we start seeing large groups forcing their way into the country again, that will quickly become our business, and Sheinbaum had better understand that. 

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Politico: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is expected to unveil a plan for disbanding the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group as early as this week, according to three people with knowledge of the long-awaited announcement.

In dissolving the counterterrorism and protest-response unit, the democratic socialist mayor would fulfill a key 2025 campaign pledge with the aim of mollifying an increasingly restive base.

Mamdani’s plan is expected to involve nixing the SRG and potentially replacing it with a new civilian unit that would take the lead on responding to protests, said one of the people who spoke to POLITICO and was granted anonymity to discuss the announcement. Under the plan — which had not been finalized as of Thursday morning — the new civilian unit would be supported by NYPD officers, who would assemble nearby and could step in to conduct arrests if needed, said the person, noting that the civilian entity’s main goal would be deescalation.

The same person said City Hall has been considering placing the civilian protest unit under the umbrella of Mamdani’s signature Office of Community Safety, which he launched earlier this year.

Ed: NYC voters are about to get what they voted for, good and hard, again. Mamdani wants to dismantle the SRG in order to maintain direct control of the protest space from Gracie Mansion. That will mean the Left gets to run riot in the Big Apple, and any dissenters will get shut down toute suite. 

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Ed: Here's the link to the Axios report. This data covers the first nine months of this year, which is also the first full year of Mamdani's tenure. 

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The Hollywood Reporter: “I didn’t expect to get emotional,” Gal Gadot said, pausing as she grew tearful onstage at the Beverly Wilshire on Wednesday evening. “I’m sorry.”

A few seconds before, the Wonder Woman star was smiling, relaying a story to the crowd at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Humanitarian Award Dinner about how the evening’s honoree, Skydance co-CEO Ynon Kreiz, 61, had delivered his baby daughter in a car pulled over on a busy London street.

But Gadot, 41, grew somber when the subject turned to the Oct. 7 massacre and the war it incited.

“I’m frightened by how quickly hatred of Jews is spreading — and how openly it is expressed and accepted,” Gadot said. “If people get used to hearing and seeing hatred and looking the other way, then where does it end?”

Ed: Kudos to Gadot for standing up to the hatred. As the article goes on to reference, Hollywood itself has become a superspreader of sorts. Mark Ruffalo is one of the leaders in that effort, and his name definitely came up. However, American voters in Michigan and New Jersey boosted it last week by electing Abdul El-Sayed and Adam Hamawy to office, too. New Yorkers led that off by handing their city to Mamdani. Speaking of superspreaders ...

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Only in a free country can you build a career telling people they aren’t free.

CONTEXT: Communist regimes don’t just jail their critics.

Under Stalin, the Soviet secret police executed 681,692 people in two years, by the regime’s own records. That’s more than 900 a day.

Under Mao, the Great Leap Forward killed at least 45 million people in four years, per historian Frank Dikötter.

Under Pol Pot, nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population was dead within four years.

Ed: Democrats' embrace of Piker shows that antisemitism is now the mainstream of their party. And not just antisemitism but rejection of personal liberty and the core institutional American values of ordered liberty. 

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Ed: I wondered about that too. 

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NBC News: A Justice Department official called on Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., on Wednesday to preserve documents related to what he claims is harassment of citizens during Blumenthal’s investigation into White House ballroom donors, threatening “significant legal consequences” if he does not comply.

The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas, Aaron Reitz, alleged in a letter to Blumenthal that his investigation equated to threatening “citizens for associating themselves with the President and other public officials.” The White House warned congressional Democrats on Wednesday that efforts to investigate the administration could be a crime.

In a post on X with a copy of the letter attached, Reitz equated Blumenthal’s investigation examining anonymous donors for the roughly $400 million project on White House grounds with wielding Congress as a “weapon” against Americans.

“I’m taking the first step to stop this abuse of power,” Reitz said.

Ed: The Great Lawfare Battle of 2027 is about to begin, with a Democrat-controlled Congress on one side and the Department of Justice on the other. Stuck in between ... J.D. Vance?

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Ed: I, for one, look forward to Mrs. Obama's new career in stand-up comedy. 

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Ed: I know at least one reader who believes she's teeing up a run next year. She would be formidable. I thought she might have jumped into the 2024 sweepstakes had Trump decided to stay out. Huckabee Sanders is always worth watching. 

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Last night's lyric: "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo" by Lobo.