Happy New Year, folks!

So several people wrote in yesterday to say that, like many others, I had erred in saying that yesterday was the last decade of a whole decade. Technically, this is incorrect. In practice, it is correct. As I asked one reader, do you think 1980 was a year in the seventies or the eighties? I rest my case. Have a wonderful day, everyone.

Over the holidays the Times ran a Ukraine scandal story which mainly stitched together the broader storyline but also broke some significant news. In late August the Secretaries of Defense and State and the National Security Advisor met together with the President in the Oval Office to try to persuade him to release the contested military aid to Ukraine. This news only confirms what has always been the most ominous dimension of the Ukraine scandal.

If you’ve observed or been engaged in the debate over The New York Times’ “1619 Project,” I have a book I want to recommend to you. It’s not about that specific debate at all, not about slavery or the Civil War or American history, at least not directly. It’s called That Noble Dream: The ‘Objectivity Question’ and the American Historical Profession. I was reminded of it today for a totally random reason — a quote from deep in the book by the late historian of slavery Eugene Genovese.

I want to recommend a new publication to you. TPM alum Nick Martin is starting a new email-based publication focused exclusively on hate groups and extremism in the U.S. — militias, white nationalist groups, neo-Nazis, et al. This is well-trodden terrain for TPM, as you know if you’re a regular reader. But I don’t know anyone who knows the subject better or is more dedicated to the beat than Nick. It’s called The Informant and it launches next Monday, Jan. 6. If you’re interested, you can sign up for it now at this link.

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We now have apparent confirmation that the U.S. mounted a retaliatory raid on a convoy in Iraq (unclear whether it’s a drone attack or missiles) that killed a leader of the Iraqi militia that menaced the U.S. Embassy and critically also killed Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. There is apparent confirmation of Soleimani’s death on Iraqi TV. I don’t believe we have clear confirmation that this was a U.S. strike. But it’s hard to know who else would be in any position to have done it. It’s a chaotic and developing story. Perhaps new reports will change the picture. But it seems pretty clear that Soleimani is dead.

I hesitate to comment more than simply to say that this is a massive, massive escalation of the confrontation between the U.S. and Iran. Soleimani is a very important figure in Iran. People will disagree about the wisdom of this action or its eventual consequences. But this is a big, big deal — a pandora’s box type escalation with consequences that are hard to predict.

So yes, as we said last night, this was a pretty big deal. This is not my subject area. So I will spare you any unrooted commentary. I’ll share one thing. In all the conversations I’ve had over the years with people who do know about Iran they stress one thing: for decades, Iran’s core defense doctrine has been to maximize its strategic reach and deterrence as much as possible without getting into a conventional war with the U.S. That’s clear in the use of proxy militias across the region. It’s clear in the ways Iran has antagonized the U.S. but only up to a point while it occupied its two immediate neighboring states, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Affordable Care Act could be headed back to the Supreme Court again — just in time for the 2020 election.

Josh Kovensky’s got an update here on yet more nuggets of information and clues tying Paul Manafort to the origins of the Trump/Giuliani extortion campaign in Ukraine. This particular meeting is only one part of the equation. But as we and others have explained previously it’s pretty clear that all the conspiracy theories we’re now familiar with originated with Russian intelligence and Manafort himself. The two stories are one story.

It is basically impossible to think that President Trump’s decision to authorize the dramatic assassination of Qasem Soleimani wasn’t influenced by his looming impeachment trial. But we’re also getting more detail now on the precise chain of events leading up to it. I recommend first this Twitter thread from the Times Rukmini Callimachi. The upshot is that the claim of disrupted future attacks was thin at best, inferences drawn from Soleimani’s travel itinerary placed in the context of the shadowy game of tit for tat the two countries have been playing for the last year.

From a different perspective, this is the kind of assemblage of evidence that gets made after you make a decision — justification rather than actual reason. Callimachi has more details. But there’s nothing about the version of the evidence she presents that would make anyone think there was evidence of a threat that required imminent action. Assuming her outlines of the evidence is correct, this is after the fact justification meant to put the operation on a better legal and political footing.

President Trump’s order to assassinate Iranian General Qasem Soleimani has momentarily pushed all from the headlines. But before last Friday and going forward all talk was of the impending impeachment trial in the Senate. As observers tried to make sense of the stand-off over the kind of trial that would be held, most attention focused on Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — the canonical “moderates” who have repeatedly been a Trump Era focus. But this is completely wrong, a frankly imbecilic mistake. I don’t know how much of this is Democrats’ focus or the press generally. It’s probably a mix. But it’s completely wrong, though Collins is in a separate category for reasons I will explain.

There are roughly half a dozen vulnerable Senate Republicans: Cory Gardner (R-CO), Martha McSally (R-AZ), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Susan Collins (R-ME), Joni Ernst (R-IA) and David Perdue (R-GA).