The ayatollah’s birthday surprise

Did Iran’s ayatollah have the worst birthday ever? His eighty-fifth kicked off with a bang, as Israel retaliated after Iran’s unprecedented strike across the Jewish state that featured a failed barrage of lethal drones over the weekend. 

What comes next from Iran remains anyone’s guess — but the Israeli response, which struck an Iranian military but not nuclear site, served as an undoubted shot across the bow to the largest state sponsor of terrorism. The message was that it can’t attempt to directly attack Israel’s homeland without consequences and that Israel has the capability to attack Iran’s nukes if they so please. Iranian proxies, like Hamas, not only invaded Israel on October 7, but have been plaguing global shipping routes for months.

Halfway across the world, Israel’s response raised the pressure in America as well, where Congress has been paralyzed for months over how to supply aid to our allies in Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, as each faces emboldened adversaries who are potentially eager to seize on President Joe Biden’s weakness.

“Iran is betting that we’re too weak-willed to support our ally,” Congresswoman Celeste Maloy told The Spectator. “We have to act like a world superpower, not a nation with no moral compass,” adding a gif from Willy Wonka that suggests Biden is living in a fantasy world. 

While Iran denied that Israel was even responsible for the strike and downplayed its effects, foreign policy hawks predictably celebrated, with some going so far as to mock the country’s supreme leader. 

Congresswoman Claudia Tenney, one of the GOP’s foremost Iran hawks, told the ayatollah to “take the win,” mirroring how Israel’s detractors told the country to relax after Iran’s unprecedented incursion with hundreds of deadly drones that, while mostly unsuccessful, aimed to indiscriminately murder Jewish, Muslim and Christian civilians. 

Across the aisle, while more than fifty Democrats are moving to suspend aid to Israel, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries still predicts that an “overwhelming majority” will ultimately vote for the aid. 

However, even the specter of America’s closest ally being under attack is not enough to ensure smooth sailing. Speaker Mike Johnson’s grip on his gavel is unprecedentedly tenuous, with three Republicans now backing his ouster over frustrations about American foreign aid — even as Johnson-aligned groups, like the American Action Network, are rolling out polling that shows even among safe-district Republican primary voters, the aid package’s components — especially ones clearly tied to American national security — are popular.

By a margin of 82 percent to 15 percent, for example, AAN’s polling found that GOP primary voters in deeply Republican House seats, back “refilling US weapon stockpiles that have been drained because many weapons have been sent to Ukraine.” More broadly, GOP primary voters in the most conservative districts in America back helping Ukraine against Russia by a convincing twenty-one-point margin, 57 percent to 36 percent.

Nevertheless, Congressman Paul Gosar teamed up with Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie in backing Johnson’s ouster. Some of Johnson’s colleagues, like Ohio’s Warren Davidson, are openly suggesting that he won’t be the House Republicans’ leader for much longer.

After a hectic week, final votes are expected tomorrow morning. 

-Matthew Foldi

On our radar

JURY SELECTION COMPLETE All twelve jurors and four alternates were officially seated in former president Donald Trump’s “hush money” trial in New York; it is the first criminal trial of a US president. 

JOHNSON ON EDGE Representative Paul Gosar announced he will join Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie in supporting a motion to remove Speaker Mike Johnson from leadership over his support of a new foreign aid package. 

LIKE MOTHER… Representative Ilhan Omar’s daughter Isra, who attends Barnard College, was one of the students arrested at the Columbia University protests against the university’s investment in corporations that do business in Israel. The students put up an encampment on Columbia school grounds, violating campus policy. 

Elissa explains it all

Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin is poised to become the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s open Senate seat and will likely face Republican Mike Rogers in the general election. And Cockburn’s friends who have worked in Michigan politics say Slotkin will employ whatever tactics necessary to win. 

One source passed along a tracker video from Slotkin’s 2018 congressional race, where she unseated incumbent Republican Mike Bishop. For those unfamiliar, trackers are typically employed by rival political organizations and are tasked with following candidates around and documenting all of their public appearances. In this video, Slotkin is seen leaving a political forum in July 2018 as the tracker asks her whether she plans to join the Medicare-for-All Caucus.

When Slotkin finally gets to her car, she looks pointedly into the camera and says, “How are Sloan and Leroy?”

“How do you know my dog’s names?” the tracker asks in shock, as Slotkin closes her car door.

People who spoke with the tracker after the incident say he was shaken up and thought Slotkin intended to threaten him. The tracker, who passed away not long after the incident, did not have social media at the time and could not figure out how Slotkin learned his dogs’ names. He speculated that a girl he had recently met on Tinder was working for her campaign — or that Slotkin’s team had pulled documents from the local humane society, who adopted the dogs out to the tracker. 

It might sound crazy, Cockburn’s sources admit, but they also note that Sloktin is ex-CIA and spent three tours in Iraq as an analyst. Slotkin’s campaign did not return a request for comment from The Spectator.

–Cockburn

Person set on fire outside Trump trial

A man self-immolated outside of former president Donald Trump’s trial in New York City. Nearby media outlets caught the graphic scene on camera; a body was seen engulfed in flames and then smoking as first responders extinguished the fire. The individual was then taken away on a stretcher by paramedics. The man was reportedly motivated by a “Ponzi scheme” and “totalitarian scam” perpetuated by the US government. 

A US Air Force service member set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC in February to protest the United State’s stance on the war in Gaza. 

–Amber Duke