Editors’ Blog

I’m going to use this thread to try to give you as best I can tell the most current information on what’s unfolding between Israel and Iran.

5:59 PM: Iranian state news services are now claiming they’ve launched a wave of ballistic missiles. I say claim because we’re deep in the fog of war here. And the use of ballistic missiles will take this situation into very different territory. They also arrive at their targets very quickly.

5:34 PM: Not surprising but still notable: the UK military also appears to be involved in the shootdown effort. It is highly interesting to me that there are credible reports of the Jordanian and Saudi militaries already targeting parts of the Iranian attack. The Houthi militia in Yemen has apparently also entered the fray. Less clear what if anything is happening with other “axis of resistance” proxies in Lebanon, Syria or Iraq.

5:27 PM: We now have closed airspace in Israel, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon. This isn’t surprising. It would be insane to have anything but military aircraft in the air right now. Multiple militaries and air defenses will be shooting anything in the air out of the sky. But still a measure of the moment.

5:18 PM: From my limited understanding of these things, Israel, the U.S. and others should be able to intercept most of these attacks, perhaps even the great majority of these drones and missiles. The much bigger question is what Israel will feel compelled to do in response.

5:13 PM: Drones take nine or ten hours to get from Iran to Israel. Cruise missiles three to four hours.

5:04 PM: In the last hour Iran launched a large armada of “suicide” drones against Israel, apparently in two or three waves. Israel, Jordan and probably other countries have totally closed their air space. Basically, anything in the air is going to be shot out of the sky. There are further reports that Iran has launched a volley of missiles, presumably cruise missiles. But that later detail seems less clear. There have been a number of on-the-record reports that the U.S. and Israel are currently tracking drones en route to Israel. The confirmation that cruise missiles have already been launched is less clear. It’s quite possible the drones — which can be shot down in most cases — are meant to saturate air defenses and allow other more lethal munitions to get through. That’s about all we know at the moment. Iran and Israel are not close to each other. These things take hours to get from one place to another. It is clear that the U.S. and almost certainly regional allies are actively involved in trying to shoot all of these things down.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss Arizona’s new, near-total abortion ban and what it means for the 2024 elections.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

Today in Atlanta a reporter asked Trump whether he would sign a national abortion ban if Congress sent one to him as President. He said he would not. A clear “no.” He got asked again, and again said no. It should go without saying that there’s zero reason to believe him. If Congress passed such a law he would almost certainly sign it. But that’s not what’s interesting here. He very conspicuously did not say this in his abortion mini-speech on Monday. It’s not like he didn’t know that was an option. He and his campaign very strategically did not say this. Now he has. It is a very clear sign of just how much Trump and his campaign feel like they’re on the run and on the ropes on this issue, partly because the Monday announcement was generally ineffective and even more after the bombshell news yesterday out of Arizona. Just two days later and they’re already having to do repair work on his big announcement that was supposed to sidestep the issue for the campaign.

Biden’s campaign has settled on a very clear message they’re using in response to every new restriction and horror story. “Donald Trump did this.” It works because it’s true. Indeed, Trump himself has shown he’s unwilling and unable not to keep taking the same credit. Donald Trump did this. And he’s feeling the heat in a way his own campaign did not expect and so far is showing itself unable to deal with.

TPM Reader JK checks in on a Montana Senate candidate’s absurd claims about his emergency room visit after he accidentally shot himself while visiting a National Park in Montana.

Speaking as a trauma surgeon, you’re absolutely right about Sheehy. There’s absolutely no reason for doctors to report a bullet in someone, unless it just got there. People come in with “retained missiles” all the time. If there’s a healed scar over it, it doesn’t matter at all – it just means they can’t get an MRI.  And of course it’s obvious when someone has been recently shot vs years ago. The whole story is complete nonsense from bottom to top.

I’d missed this from a few days ago. At NBC News, TPM alum Sahil Kapur notes that Democrats use of abortion ballot initiatives to coincide with the November election can be seen as a kind of replay of the 2004 election in which the Bush campaign got state Republican parties and activists to work to get anti-gay marriage initiatives on the ballot to goose turnout for their partisans. There are some pretty basic substantive differences, of course. Abortion rights that existed in 2022 have close to disappeared in many of these states and the ballot initiatives would bring them back and in many cases expand them. At the time legalizing gay marriage wasn’t really on the horizon in any of the states in question. But the functional similarity is a point well-taken.

Whatever happens in Arizona in November, we got a preview of the difficulty Republican candidates will have in states where high-stakes ballot initiatives literally put abortion on the ballot. Shortly after Arizona’s high court ruled that the state must go back to the 1864 abortion law which forbids virtually every abortion, Kari Lake, probable GOP Senate nominee (and governor over the water) released a remarkable statement. She first denounced the 1864 law, which she said she supported as recently as last fall. She said she opposed today’s ruling. She then demanded Gov. Katie Hobbs and the Republican state legislature “come up with an immediate common sense solution that Arizonans can support.” She then said that the decision will be up to voters in the ballot initiative that will be on the November ballot — that is, the initiative she actually opposes.