Phillips P O’Brien/The Atlantic:
Why Trump Didn’t Plan for the Strait of Hormuz
In wartime, the enemy always gets a vote.
In its failure to anticipate Iran’s reaction, the administration ignored a dynamic that former Defense Secretary James Mattis, a first-term Trump appointee, was fond of pointing out: Once hostilities begin, “the enemy gets a vote.” U.S. leaders have drastically underestimated the Iranian regime’s ability to survive, adjust, and strike back. Just two weeks into a war that began at a time of the president’s choosing, the U.S. appears uncertain about what to do next.
Austin Kocher/X via Threadreader:
Daniel Dale/CNN:
Republicans release AI deepfake of James Talarico as phony videos proliferate in midterm races
The National Republican Senatorial Committee’s deepfake of James Talarico, the Democratic nominee in the US Senate race in Texas, is only the latest in a series of AI-generated creations from the national GOP campaign organization in the past year. But it’s the first featuring a phony version of a candidate talking in a lifelike manner for so long – an example of how far AI technology has come in a short time and an indicator of the direction attack ads may be heading.
“The face and voice are very good. There is a slight misalignment between audio and video, but otherwise this is hyper-realistic and I don’t think that most people would immediately know it is fake,” Hany Farid, a University of California, Berkeley professor specializing in digital forensics, said in an email.
The use of AI deepfakes in campaign advertising raises a host of ethical questions. It has also prompted some bipartisan calls for federal legislation or regulation on the practice, though those ideas have also faced pushback on First Amendment grounds.
Texas Tribune:
Democratic turnout doubles in Rio Grande Valley where four Hispanic counties previously went for Trump
Democratic enthusiasm in the Valley’s four counties could foreshadow a November reversal of Trump’s historic 2024 sweep there — and signal that Latino voters have become swing voters.
From Austin to Washington, D.C., Republicans were elated after the 2022 primaries when
GOP turnout more than doubled in the Rio Grande Valley compared with the previous midterms and after a yearslong investment to court candidates and Hispanic voters alike in South Texas.
Four years later, Democrats are the ones finding joy along the border.
Texas Democrats more than doubled their turnout from 2024 during the primary elections on March 3 in the four counties that make up the Rio Grande Valley — Cameron, Starr, Hidalgo and Willacy — as the percentage of registered Democratic voters who cast a ballot far exceeded that of recent elections, including in 2018 during President Donald Trump’s first term and 2020 when he sought reelection.
Reuters:
Pope Leo says Christians who start wars should go to confession
While Leo did not name anyone on Friday, in recent days he has been
ramping up calls for an end to the ongoing
Iran war, which began with joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on February 28.
U.S. President Donald Trump was raised in the Presbyterian Christian faith. Several of his top deputies, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, are Catholic.
Jesus taught his followers to be non-violent. The Catholic Church generally opposes war.
For centuries, the Church has evaluated conflicts according to the just war tradition, which uses a series of criteria to evaluate whether a conflict can be considered morally justifiable, for example repelling an unjust invasion.
G Elliott Morris/Strength in Numbers:
I graphed every president's approval rating during "rally around the flag" events
From World War II to Trump's bombing of Iran, only a handful of historical conflicts produced clear jumps in presidential approval. The Iran strikes look like the latest case of a non-bump
A simple explanation for Trump’s non-rally is that his war is unpopular. I found that on average, just 38% of voters said they approved of the U.S. strikes in Iran.
But a full accounting of why polling rallies have happened historically reveals a more interesting story of public opinion about presidents and their wars…
So why didn’t Trump get a rally? I’ve read the political science literature on rally effects and identified five conditions that need to line up for a meaningful bounce in presidential approval. Trump’s Iran strikes fail on nearly all of them.
