The Trump administration’s posture toward the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz gets more confusing by the day. Over the weekend, the White House was adamant that Operation Epic Fury had wrapped up and a new project to reopen the strait, Project Freedom, was now underway—a transparent effort to dodge the sixty-day deadline for Congress to authorize the conflict. Now, however, the White House is backing away even from its nascent Project Freedom: Yesterday, Trump announced on Truth Social that the project “will be paused for a short period of time” to find out whether a deal is finally possible with Iran. Happy Wednesday.

Mark Hertling and Ben Parker are going live on Substack and YouTube at noon eastern time for a an episode of Command Post on the ongoing operation(s?) in Iran and the boneheaded withdrawal of American troops from Germany.

Cheer Up, It’s Still May!

by William Kristol

Last Friday, in what several readers pointed out was an uncharacteristically upbeat moment, I wrote, “Cheer up. It’s May.”

Well, I don’t want to shock anyone, but I’m going to double down on the uncharacteristic upbeatness. And I think I have pretty good reason to do so. In a special election yesterday for an open seat in the Michigan State Senate in the Saginaw and Bay City area, the Democratic candidate, firefighter and Marine veteran Chedrick Greene, won and won easily. In the previous state senate contest in the district, in 2022, the Democratic candidate’s margin had been less than seven points. In 2024, Kamala Harris carried the district by less than one point. Yesterday, in a race in which both parties invested heavily, Greene romped by twenty points.

So the past year’s trend of notable Democratic overperformance continued, this time in a mostly working-class district in a swing state. The result certainly seems to bode well for November. So Democrats are happy this morning.

But so is President Trump.

In Republican primary elections across Indiana, Trump-backed challengers deposed five Republican state senators who had helped block his wished-for gerrymander of the state’s congressional districts. A sixth race was too close to call. And the incumbents who lost were conservative Republicans, albeit of a more traditional type.

The only real issue in the races was loyalty to Trump. As NBC News noted, in central Indiana’s District 41, for example, where Trump-backed candidate Michelle Davis challenged a 20-year incumbent, one ad from American Leadership PAC on behalf of Davis mentioned Trump’s name four times in fifteen seconds. Davis won, 59 percent to 41 percent.

So Trump is happy, putting up celebratory posts on Truth Social. He’ll be happier still if he succeeds ten days from now in knocking off incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) in the GOP primary, and then if Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) goes down to defeat three days later, on May 19. The first result seems likely, the second quite possible.

But Trump’s joy at once again driving all dissenters from his ranks should be short-lived. If he’s successful, the Republican party will be even more completely and totally his party. Which, given his steadily increasing unpopularity, will presumably further increase the likelihood of voters turning to Democratic candidates for both the House and Senate this November in order to check Trump.

So Democrats have reasons to be happy, too. It’s too bad that decent Indiana Republicans who stood up to Trump have to suffer in the process. But that’s the choice of the Republican primary electorate, and the only solution for now is an even bigger Republican defeat in November.

The issue on which Indiana Republicans wanted their representatives to go along with Trump was partisan redistricting. Last night’s results will supercharge efforts in Southern states to take advantage of the Supreme Court’s gutting of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to gerrymander themselves. It’s true that this may help Republicans pick up a few more Southern House seats this year.

On the other hand, this whole effort should serve to remind voters across the nation of how much is at stake this November. I suspect whatever individual House seats Republicans pick up in redistricting could pale by comparison to the effects of a further nationalization and Trumpification of the 2026 election cycle. Here too, the worse the GOP looks, the better prospects will look for Democrats. And, for now at least, the better things will look for democracy.

I’ll add that