Good Monday morning. I’m Isaac Saul, fresh off celebrating my fifth wedding anniversary and Father’s Day (in case you missed our special Father’s Day podcast, which featured my dad, listen here or watch it on YouTube here). Yesterday also marked another (less joyous) anniversary — one year since the U.S. bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities and Vice President JD Vance went on national television to assure Americans that we weren’t about to enter a major conflict. Fast forward to this past weekend, and Vance is leading negotiations to try to end a major conflict. More on that in a bit.

Outside of Vance and Iran, we’re also answering a reader question about a new Hawaii law and Citizens United, and we have a rather shocking “Under the radar” story about the Trump administration potentially quashing an investigation into a pay-for-clemency scheme. It’s a 13-minute read; let’s get the week started.

Quick hits.

1. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced he will resign as leader of the Labour Party and as prime minister. (The resignation)
2. U.S. Park Police officers arrested former U.S. Olympian David Hearn for allegedly vandalizing the refurbished Reflecting Pool in the capital. Hearn denied wrongdoing and said he was inspecting a piece of the pool’s liner that had already detached. (The arrest)
3. President Donald Trump unveiled the aircraft gifted to the U.S. by Qatar that will serve as the new Air Force One. (The unveiling)
4. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani canceled his planned trip to the United States in response to President Trump’s claim that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had “begged” for a photo with him at the G7 Summit in France last week. Meloni called the comments “completely fabricated.” (The response)
5. Right-wing candidate Abelardo De La Espriella is projected to win Colombia’s presidential election, defeating left-wing Sen. Iván Cepeda by a narrow margin. President Trump endorsed De La Espriella in June. (The result)

Today’s topic.

Vance and Iran. On Sunday, Vice President JD Vance and a team of U.S. negotiators met with Iranian officials in Switzerland to begin peace negotiations. The vice president took a leading role in finalizing the memorandum of understanding (MOU) that Iran and the U.S. signed last week, and on Sunday, Vance called for a broad reset of relations after nearly four months of war. He also rebuked Israeli politicians for their criticism of the recent MOU, drawing scrutiny from some conservatives and raising broader questions about his prospects as a future party standard-bearer. 

The MOU that the U.S. and Iran signed on Wednesday extended a ceasefire that began on April 7 and outlined the terms of a permanent peace deal. The current round of discussions centers on Iran’s nuclear program, along with reopening the Strait of Hormuz and removing U.S. sanctions on Iran. 

Vance and U.S. officials met with Iran’s Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi for approximately 80 minutes on Sunday in a discussion mediated by Pakistani and Qatari officials. Beforehand, Vice President Vance suggested the talks were an opportunity to “turn over a new leaf” in U.S.–Iran relations, adding, “If [Iran’s] leadership is willing to give up being a driver of regional instability, if they are willing to give up nuclear weapons ambitions in the long term, then the United States is willing to fundamentally transform our relationship.” 

On Saturday, Iran claimed that Israeli strikes in Lebanon violated the MOU and said it would again block the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation. President Donald Trump then threatened to resume airstrikes in Iran if the waterway remained closed, also calling on Iran to restrain Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel. “If they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Iranian officials reportedly suspended peace talks in Switzerland in response to Trump’s comments, but talks resumed through intermediaries and are expected to continue throughout the week. 

Separately, Vance has criticized Israeli leaders for questioning the U.S.’s strategy with Iran. On Thursday, responding to questions about Israeli cabinet officials’ objections to the MOU, Vance said, “If I was in the Cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.”

Some Republican lawmakers objected to the comments. “I thought JD’s comments yesterday were absolutely inappropriate and frankly disgusting,” Rep. Randy Fine (FL) said on Friday. Other Republicans have questioned the MOU’s terms without naming Vance explicitly. Sen. Ted Cruz (TX) said he thinks President Trump is “[getting] some really bad advice on this deal,” calling out provisions for a $300 billion Iranian reconstruction fund and sanctions relief. 

Today, we’ll explore Vance’s role in peace discussions and his evolving position within the Trump administration, with views from the right and left. Then, Executive Editor Isaac Saul gives his take.

What the right is saying.

• Some on the right question Vance’s motives on the Iran deal. 
• Others suggest pro-Israel conservatives should view him favorably but cautiously. 
• Still others say Vance must draw a clear contrast between Trump and himself. 

In The Free Press, Eli Lake said “Vance tries to have it both ways on the Iran deal.”

“For many mainstream Republicans, the new memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the U.S. and Iran is nothing more than American surrender,” Lake wrote. “To Vance, though, the doubters have it all wrong. The vice president argued that America wins either way with the agreement. ‘Either they get nothing, we’ve destroyed their nuclear program, and the Strait of Hormuz is open… Or they fundamentally transform themselves, and that’s a big win, too.’ That is one interpretation. But details emerging about the MOU that was announced on Sunday show that Iran has already won concessions even before the official negotiations begin.”

“The vice president remains Trump’s heir apparent and the likely Republican presidential nominee for 2028. In order to win that election, Vance will need the kind of broad coalition that propelled Trump to the White House in 2024. As Vance explained in an interview with Megyn Kelly on Tuesday, the coalition that elected Trump the second time included Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Kelly,” Lake said. “All of that sounds fine. The problem is that the tenor of Kelly’s and Carlson’s attacks on Trump and his pro-Israel supporters has been outrageous… If the populist right believes that pro-Israel Americans are more loyal to a foreign power than to the U.S., then what does that say about Vance’s own support for the war that they opposed?”

In PJ Media, Scott Pinsker asked “should pro-Israel conservatives trust JD Vance?”

“On one side, pro-Israel Republicans — a vast majority of the MAGA base — are up in arms over Vice President JD Vance’s rhetorical smackdown of Israel’s opposition to the MOU. The VP’s words were biting, harsh, and uncomfortable to hear,” Pinsker said. “On the other side, plenty of Republicans nodded in enthusiastic agreement. Without question, Groypers, bigots, and Jew-haters exist — and plenty of podcasters make a living by catering to that demo. But there are also millions of fair-minded Republicans who view America’s relationship with Israel as an investment that’s in the red.”

“There are pro-Israel Republicans who’ve placed Vance’s pattern of behavior within the Groyper/antisemite paradigm: He must be one of them… On the other side, there are fair-minded Republican isolationists who view the anti-Vance pushback as a grotesque overreach — and eerily similar to leftists who cry ‘Racism!’ at every turn,” Pinsker wrote. “Pro-Israel Republicans SHOULD trust Vance, because his boss has been the most pro-Israel president in U.S. history. That alone earns him the benefit of the doubt: If political decisions reflect personal values, Trump’s decision to select Vance as his running mate speaks volumes.”

In The American Conservative, Andrew Day explored “Vance’s next move.”

“What had seemed predetermined — Vance 2028 — can no longer be taken for granted. Perhaps that’s for the best, both for Vance and the republic. American voters have a habit of defying expectations and ruining coronations,” Day said. “Vance, to come out on top [in the 2028 Republican primary], will first need to define himself. In recent years, he’s been dogged by the suspicion that he’s a cynical power seeker who doesn’t believe in much of anything. Because Vance has presented himself as a principled restrainer… the Iran War only magnifies the perception, hobbling the vice president and reviving the question: Whose man is J.D. Vance?”

“Vance is number two in an administration that has launched a catastrophic conflict at Israel’s urging and on its behalf. While he has found ways to signal that he never fully supported the war, Vance has been obliged to defend it publicly, and America First conservatives, while still preferring him to Rubio, can’t be sure where he really stands,” Day wrote. “As 2028 approaches and voters ponder whether he deserves to be their president, Vance would do very well to become his own man again. At the very least, that sounds less exhausting than trying to please irreconcilable factions on the unruly American right.”

What the left is saying.

• Many on the left see Vance as the fall guy for the administration’s failure in Iran. 
• Some suggest he could lead a broader GOP split with Israel. 
• Others say the vice president is caught between his loyalty to Trump and his 2028 presidential aspirations. 

In The Atlantic, Jonathan Chait wrote about the GOP strategy behind “making the vice president own an obvious defeat.”

“Judging by the messaging emanating from across the Republican Party, letting the president claim victory while making the vice president own an obvious defeat is the GOP strategy,” Chait said. “If the logic here is contorted, it does make political sense to Republican hawks who want to elevate Secretary of State Marco Rubio as Trump’s successor. The war they supported has ended in failure, but they don’t want the party’s anti-interventionist wing to benefit. Therefore their plan is to blame Vance, who opposed the Iran war all along, for the defeat, while insulating Rubio.”

“Vance is clearly betting that most Republicans will prefer his version of the story, which presents the Iran war as the latest Trump win in a line of unbroken victories,” Chait wrote. “A healthy conservative movement would be able to concede error, rather than resorting to a choose-your-own-adventure ruse in which the war is Trump’s if we won and Vance’s if we lost. But the movement has decayed to the point that honest analysis is impossible, and prominent Republicans hardly bother to pretend otherwise.”

In CNN, Aaron Blake said “Vance’s threat is the latest sign [the] U.S. could be breaking with Israel.”

“The United States joining with Israel to launch a war in the Middle East was always a fraught situation for the longstanding U.S.–Israeli alliance. But things seemed to come to a head Thursday, when Vice President JD Vance had some blunt and harsh words for Israel — words that sounded a whole lot like a threat,” Blake wrote. “Vance’s remarks, in which he pointed to Israel’s worldwide unpopularity, were the most striking… He cited how reliant Israel is on American weapons, as well as the need for some Israeli leaders ‘to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in.’”

“It’s true that Trump often treats allies poorly and in very transactional ways. (Look at what’s happening right now with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.) But the alliance with Israel has been different. Trump has seemed to view it as more beneficial and almost sacred, even when Netanyahu was personally frustrating him,” Blake said. “Yet the way Vance spoke about Israel on Thursday sounded a lot like his and Trump’s browbeating of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — remember ‘Have you said “thank you” once?’ — in the Oval Office last year.”

In Bloomberg, Nia-Malika Henderson suggested “Trump’s Iran deal comes with great risk — for JD Vance.”

“[Vance] largely owes his political career to Trump, and his political future largely depends on his defense of him and his policies. That now includes the conflict with Iran, a geopolitical blunder of historic proportions. America lost a war that Trump didn’t need to start,” Henderson wrote. “The irony is that Vance privately argued against striking Iran but has since become the face of the conflict and now the deal. His glib and condescending podcast conversation with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, which goes for an hour, is an illustration of one of the iron rules of politics: If you’re explaining, you’re losing.”

“In October 2024, when asked what she would have done differently than former President Joe Biden, Kamala Harris (in)famously said that ‘not a thing comes to mind.’ She later explained that she was only trying to be loyal to the president,” Henderson said. “Vance, who has to be looking over his shoulder at Rubio’s rising status, now has that same problem. He also has the added complication of a vengeful president, who sees MAGA as his own and is reluctant to bequeath it.”

My take.

Reminder: “My take” is a section where we give ourselves space to share a personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• After his boasts a year ago, Vance finds himself in an uncomfortable position.
• The vice president has to sell the public on a war he doesn’t want and is betting his political future on Trump’s whims.
• I understand the criticisms, but feel for one of the only guys who was right about the war from the start.

Executive Editor Isaac Saul: Exactly one year ago today, just after the United States announced it had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites, Vice President JD Vance appeared on Meet the Press with a message to Americans:

“I empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East,” he said. “I understand the concern, but the difference is that back then we had dumb presidents.”

Vance insisted that we were not at war with Iran but instead at war with its nuclear program, that we’d set that program back without getting into “some long, drawn-out thing.”

Some of us were very skeptical about these claims at the time.

A year later, Vance is in Switzerland trying to negotiate an end to an actual war that has destabilized the Middle East, spiked energy prices, cost America billions of dollars and 13 servicemembers their lives, killed thousands of Iranians and damaged Iran so much it is now seeking a $300 billion fund to rebuild the country.

I don’t say all this to remind you, after I wrote about all the times I’ve been wrong, that I’m sometimes correct. I say it because Vance is now a presumptive 2028 Republican nominee for president, if not the odds-on favorite, and it’s important to hold him to account for his statements. 

Vance has spent the better part of the last year trying to defend a war that he clearly did not support. He’s now trying to defend a deal that looks every bit the spiritual successor to Obama’s Iran deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), which he and every Republican have spent the better part of a decade lambasting, all to get us back to a pre-war status quo — except our threat of military force is now less credible, Iran has much greater control over one of the most important shipping lanes in the world, and we’re apparently on the hook to find a way to rebuild Iran after the destruction we just wrought.

The bad news for Vance is that I’m not the only one ready to hold him to account. The president “joked” last week that if the deal works out, he’ll take credit for it; but if it doesn’t, he’ll blame Vance. I’m no body language expert, but I noticed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, another 2028 contender who is widely reported to oppose this deal, didn’t so much as crack a smile. I don’t think the president was kidding, and I don’t think Rubio finds any of this funny.

Many of Vance’s supporters who cheered when Trump picked him as his running mate are now aghast at the scale of his failure to keep us out of another Middle East quagmire. It was a core promise of President Trump’s 2024 campaign, and one of the core talking points Vance repeated throughout the race. A prominent conservative pundit who supported all three Trump campaigns and Vance’s rise to vice president described Vance to me as one of the most disingenuous, ideologically flexible politicians he’d ever encountered. Once a diehard supporter of the vice president’s, he now feels spurned and disgusted by what he’s morphed into.

In order to pull off this high-wire act of working for the president while leaving his own future candidacy open, Vance has quite the task: He must never criticize Trump, or his decision to start a war with Iran, and simultaneously sell a deal to the public that effectively cements an American loss — all while trying to prevent Iran, the U.S., Israel, Hezbollah, and Gulf states from continuing to fire rockets at each other. And then he’ll have to convince everyone that whatever post-war order this deal creates is better than our situation a year ago.

How are things going so far? Well, according to Axios, since the MOU was signed on Wednesday, “Iran said it was closing the Strait of Hormuz again (though it didn’t in practice, per U.S. officials), Israel intermittently bombed Lebanon, and President Trump threatened to seize and toll the strait, kill Iran’s peace negotiators, and send Syria in to fight Hezbollah.” 

I’d say not great.

At the same time, even though Vance’s position is precarious, he’s the one who stepped onto the high wire in the first place. And I can understand why. As Nick Catoggio argued in The Dispatch, Vance wasn’t forced against his will to be the fall guy; instead, he likely believes that being the face of ending the war will be better than being the face of starting it. I actually think that’s a smarter bet than sidelining himself on the issue completely. 

He’s also positioning Israel as a scapegoat, which is both cynical and politically astute. Both Democrats and Republicans are souring on Israel, a reality most U.S. politicians have been slow to respond to. I can hardly blame Americans for this pivot: Three years of watching the destruction of Gaza, the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, and the continued bombing of Lebanon left me questioning my own Zionism. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a violence-prone leader credibly accused of corruption who sold Trump on the Iran war, which has now backfired spectacularly for the United States. 

For Americans with much looser attachments to Israel than I have, questions about why we continue to tie our fate to the decision-makers in its government, especially as some of them make obscene, genocidal threats, are bound to pop up more often. After Trump’s administration reaped mountains of frustration for giving Israel most of what it wanted in the last 18 months, Vance is now passing that frustration on.

Even if distancing himself from Israel is politically prudent, I’m fairly confident whatever comes next for Vance won’t be good for his political future. This war is an albatross around the administration’s collective neck. Iran is clearly — and rightfully — feeling empowered. Long before he got involved in negotiations, Vance chose to leave the Senate and tie his fate to Trump’s, and now all his future political aspirations rest on the hope that the president doesn’t torch him publicly for the deal we end up getting. Is that a bet you’d want to make, if you were Vance? Remember how Trump’s last vice president, Mike Pence, ended his tenure: hiding in his office while a bunch of now-Trump-pardoned radicals stalked the Capitol, chanting to hang him.

However you may feel about Vance (and I personally do not appreciate his chameleon style), it’s a tragic circumstance for one of the few people who was actually right about the damage a war with Iran would cause. Despite being right, his high-wire act is about to turn him into a center-stage fall guy. That’s the price of doing business with a president who rarely takes accountability for his own actions, but it seems to be a gamble Vance is willing and able to make. 

Take the survey: How much responsibility do you think Vice President Vance has for negotiating an end to the war in Iran? Let us know.

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Your questions, answered.

Q: Can y’all please explain what’s happening with [Hawaii’s law that undermines Citizens United]?

— Kim from Chattanooga, TN

Tangle: In May, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green (D) signed S.B. 2471. The new law asserts that “artificial persons created under state law” (or corporations) only have the power to act in ways that carry out their purposes, specifically excluding “the power to spend money or contribute anything of value to influence elections or ballot measures.” 

The law appears to directly undermine the landmark 2010 Supreme Court case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which found that corporate spending in elections is protected under the First Amendment. Hawaii’s new law attempts to restrict a corporation’s power to spend on elections in a way that directly contradicts Citizens United in practice, but not on paper. Instead of limiting a corporation’s power to spend on political campaigns, Hawaii is denying corporations operating in the state that power in the first place. 

“[The bill] tries to get around Citizens United by arguing that corporations only have the powers the state chooses to grant them, and that Hawaii can decline to grant the power to spend money on elections,” said Colin Moore, a political analyst at the University of Hawaii Manoa.

As a state law, Hawaii’s S.B. 2471 would only apply to Hawaiian elections, meaning it will not impact campaign spending in other states or at the federal level — if it stands. Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez (a Democrat) expressed doubts about the law’s constitutionality. Citizens United did not by itself confer First Amendment rights onto corporations, Lopez said; it merely interpreted political spending as a First Amendment right that a corporation — as a collection of citizens — already has.

S.B. 2471 will take effect on July 1, 2027. After that day, and unless it is overturned in court, no corporation will legally be allowed to spend money on Hawaiian elections.

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Under the radar.

On Sunday, The New York Times reported that Trump administration appointees may have pressured federal prosecutors to drop an investigation into President Trump’s commutation of David Gentile, who served roughly two weeks of a seven-year prison sentence for participating in a $1.6 billion fraud scheme. Prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York had begun exploring whether Gentile had discussed making $2.5 million in payments to those close to the president to facilitate his commutation. However, according to The Times’s report, the Eastern District dropped its investigation shortly after U.S. Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh expressed concern about the probe to prosecutors. The New York Times has the story.

The extras.

• One year ago today we had just published a Friday edition about genetic testing.
• The most clicked link in our last regular newsletter was our video about Juneteenth.
• Nothing to do with politics: The Wes Anderson–esque exploration into Australian cacti you didn’t know you needed.
• Our last survey: 4,502 readers responded to our survey on the memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran with 93% calling it a bad deal for the U.S. and a good deal for Iran. “Iran is getting hundreds of billions just for saying they won’t make nukes. They’ve been saying that for free for decades,” one respondent said. “It’s also a bad deal for the Iranian people,” said another.

Have a nice day.

A puppy in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was near the end of its rope — malnourished, buried under garbage, and stuck in a trash bin heading for the garbage truck. However, he had one stroke of luck: The trash bin fell off Naz Nalls’s truck before it could reach the compactor. When Nalls and his partner looked inside, they found the puppy and contacted their supervisor, Alex Halverson, who happened to already be driving their way. Halverson pulled the puppy out, fed him his lunch, and drove him to the Milwaukee Area Domestic Animal Control Commission. Then, after the puppy returned to health, Halverson decided to adopt him. “God knows what he went through,” Halverson said. “He was buried under garbage, and… was still super friendly.” Now, Halverson has given the puppy a new home and a new name: PJ, after the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches he fed the puppy on the day he found him. TMJ4 Milwaukee has the story.