Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Jakub Porzycki / NurPhoto / Getty; Maxar Technologies / Getty.

Dear Commons Community,

Phillips Payson O’Brien has an opinion essay today in The Atlantic entitled “What Trump—And the U.S.—Can’t Understand About Air Strikes”.  He provides kernels of good advice to the Trumps of the world who think they can change things by showing their military might.  Here is the entire essay.

“When Donald Trump ordered air strikes on key Iranian nuclear-enrichment sites last month and immediately declared that the targets had been “completely and totally obliterated,” he was counting on a single display of overwhelming air power to accomplish a major strategic goal. Though initially hesitant to join Israel’s 10-day-old bombing campaign against Iran, the president came to believe that the United States could finish off Tehran’s nuclear ambitions all at once. After what he called a “very successful attack,” Trump demanded that Israel and Iran stop fighting, declaring, “NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!”

In reality, the U.S. attack may have only delayed the Iranian program by months. Trump ended up short-circuiting both his own efforts at diplomacy with Iran and an extraordinary Israeli campaign that required years of elaborate preparation, rendered Iran’s air-defense network inoperable, and allowed Israeli forces to methodically work through a long list of target sites across the country over the course of a week and a half. Destroying a military target from the air usually requires multiple raids on the site—not one night and a victory declaration on Truth Social. Israeli military planners had clearly hoped to enlist American help in attacking Iran but may not have anticipated that it would be for one night only.

To some extent, Trump’s approach is typical of American leaders, who have routinely underestimated the true complexities of military tasks and assumed that a burst of overwhelming force will secure U.S. objectives and allow Washington to impose its version of peace. Recent events—not just in the Middle East but also in Ukraine—suggest that smaller countries with fewer resources than the United States have a far more urgent understanding specifically of how to use air power and generally of how to defeat their enemies.

An unbounded faith in American military might, combined with a desire not to get bogged down in long foreign engagements, has led to excesses of optimism in the past: the constant escalation cycle in Vietnam, when it was said that more force would bring victory; the infamous mission accomplished banners after U.S. forces deposed Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. In conflicts since the end of World War II, the U.S. military has prevailed in individual battles, but it has won only one clear victory in a war: Operation Desert Storm in 1991. This conundrum has led to far less introspection than it deserves.

One of the reasons might be that U.S. military power has been so extensive that the military, and policy makers, have not had to think too deeply about the process of winning wars. For 80 years, the U.S. military could be deployed to occupy territory, blow up structures, or destroy an enemy force—and was able to do it. It could inflict a frightening toll on its enemies at remarkably little cost to itself.

The risk of overestimating American capabilities may be greatest in decisions about applying air power. The U.S. has the most awesome air force the world has ever seen. (Not coincidentally, the successful Desert Storm campaign involved purposeful and relentless air attacks on enemy targets.) Such power has immense costs, however, one of which is the destructive luxury of not having to think deeply about just what it means to win a war. American policy makers feel able to lecture smaller powers about what they should and should not do. Trump pushed Israel—which had, remarkably, achieved the ability to move freely in Iranian airspace—to stand down before the U.S. could reliably ascertain whether its own air strikes had been effective.

Since 2022, bad instructions from the United States have been devastating to Ukraine’s effort to fight off Russian invaders. Under the Biden administration, the United States feared escalation with Russian President Vladimir Putin and kept Ukrainians from using Western-made long-range weaponry to strike legitimate military targets inside Russia. In effect, the American veto created a large safe space in Russia, and gave the Russians the flexibility to plan and execute a hugely destructive strategic air campaign against Ukraine. Until Ukraine began developing its own systems, it was nearly powerless to stop the Russians from unleashing drones and missiles on Ukrainian military and civilian targets. Instead, the Ukrainians were forced to concentrate their resources on a bloody land war fought in trenches and by drones; despite large casualties on both sides, the fighting has produced only tiny changes in territorial control.

Ukraine has done its best to change this dynamic, by working to expand its own long-range capabilities and using those weapons against targets in Russia. The tragedy for Ukrainians is that the Biden administration stood in their way for three years—and was succeeded by a Trump administration that, perhaps because of a broad sympathy with Putin, seems intent on letting Russia win.

For all its advanced weaponry, the United States would benefit from listening to smaller, more inventive militaries that are fighting larger adversaries in a rapidly evolving technological environment. Ukraine, for example, has developed enormous expertise in designing and deploying unmanned aerial vehicles, which—as the recent attacks on Russian airfields thousands of miles away from the Ukrainian border showed—create new vulnerabilities at traditional military facilities.

Unfortunately, nothing about recent U.S. actions suggests that the country’s leaders have any intention to learn from others. Under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon seems obsessed with “lethality”—the idea that the United States wins wars by bringing greater lethal force to every direct engagement with the enemy. But although that focus might sound macho and hyper-militaristic to him and Trump, it may be the precursor to more events like Trump’s Iran strikes: showy tactical attacks that fail to accomplish any strategic goals of substance.”

So true!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday, Elon Musk announced in a post on X  that “Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.” His decision to create a new political party stems from his dispute with  Republican Donald Trump saying Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax bill would bankrupt America.”

A day after asking his followers on his X whether a new U.S. political party should be created, Musk declared in the  post that “By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party and you shall have it!””  As reported by Reuters.

The announcement from Musk comes after Trump signed his self-styled “big, beautiful” tax-cut and spending bill into law on Friday, which Musk fiercely opposed.

Musk, who became the word’s richest man thanks to his Tesla car company and his SpaceX satellite firm, spent hundreds of millions on Trump’s re-election and led the Department of Government Efficiency from the start of the president’s second term aimed at slashing government spending.

The first sign of investor dissatisfaction with Musk’s announcement followed later in the day. Investment firm Azoria Partners will postpone the listing of a Tesla exchange-traded fund, Azoria CEO James Fishback said in a post on X.

Fishback is asking Tesla’s board to clarify Musk’s political ambitions and said the new party undermines the confidence shareholders had that he would be focusing more on the company after leaving government service in May.

Musk said previously that he would start a new political party and spend money to unseat lawmakers who supported the bill.

Trump earlier this week threatened to cut off the billions of dollars in subsidies that Musk’s companies receive from the federal government.

Republicans have expressed concern that Musk’s on-again, off-again feud with Trump could hurt their chances to protect their majority in the 2026 midterm congressional elections.

Asked on X what was the one thing that made him go from loving Trump to attacking him, Musk said: “Increasing the deficit from an already insane $2T under Biden to $2.5T. This will bankrupt the country.”

There was no immediate comment from Trump or the White House on Musk’s announcement.

The feud with Trump, often described as one between the world’s richest man and the world’s most powerful, has led to several precipitous falls in Tesla’s share price.

The stock soared after Trump’s November reelection and hit a high of more than $488 in December, before losing more than half of its value in April and closing last week out at $315.35.

Despite Musk’s deep pockets, breaking the Republican-Democratic duopoly will be a tall order, given that it has dominated American political life for more than 160 years, while Trump’s approval ratings in polls in his second term have generally held firm above 40%, despite often divisive policies.

It will be a tall order indeed but politically the country might need this shakeup to the two-party system.

Tony

Dear Commons Community

Barack Obama had a simple elegant message for America as we celebrated July 4th. 

“Independence Day is a reminder that America is not the project of any one person. The single most powerful word in our democracy is the word ‘We.’ ‘We The People.’ ‘We Shall Overcome.’ ‘Yes We Can.’ America is owned by no one. It belongs to all citizens. And at this moment in history—when core democratic principles seem to be continuously under attack, when too many people around the world have become cynical and disengaged—now is precisely the time to ask ourselves tough questions about how we can build our democracies and make them work in meaningful and practical ways for ordinary people.”

Amen!

Tony

Jessica Tarlov

Dear Commons Community,

Fox News host Jessica Tarlov said the “big, beautiful bill” might be anything but beautiful for moderate Republicans during next year’s midterm elections who were jubilant  as they marked the passage of Trump’s  signature “big, beautiful bill.”

She warned said that some of them might not be celebrating next year and could face unexpectedly early retirement.  As reported by The Huffington Post.

Polls show the bill ― which adds trillions to the debt, cuts taxes for the wealthy, and slashes Medicaid ― is deeply unpopular with the American public.

With midterm elections looming in 2026, Tarlov ― a rotating co-host of “The Five” ― wrote on X that moderate Republicans in particular will be at risk next year:

The bill is so unpopular that CNN data chief Harry Enten earlier this week showed it was underwater in five recent polls by between 19 and 29 percentage points.

“The American public at this particular point hate, hate, hate the ‘big, beautiful bill,’” he said. “As far as they’re concerned, it’s not a ‘big, beautiful bill,’ it’s a big, bad bill.”

Democrats also believe that Republicans who support the bill will pay the price at the polls next year.

“There are House Republicans now, this morning, who are about to sign their political obituary with this vote,” Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) told Reuters before the final votes were cast. “They are literally walking the plank for Donald Trump.”

The party that wins the White House often suffers in the midterm elections that follow. Former MSNBC host Chris Matthews expects that to be the case next year, as well, and said the passage of the bill won’t make things any easier for Republicans.

He estimated that Democrats could pick up between 15 and 20 seats ― more than enough to win control of the House.

While I appreciate the optimism of Tarlov and others, the Democrats have to get their act together.  Right now they are suffering from a serious leadership gap.

Tony

Housing Affordability on the Rise. Courtesy of Seeking Alpha.

Dear Commons Community,

The Atlantic has a featured article this morning reviewing the cost of housing in  the country.  Here is an excerpt.

“Something is happening in the housing market that really shouldn’t be. Everyone familiar with America’s affordability crisis knows that it is most acute in ultra-progressive coastal cities in heavily Democratic states. And yet, home prices have been rising most sharply in the exact places that have long served as a refuge for Americans fed up with the spiraling cost of living. Over the past decade, the median home price has increased by 134 percent in Phoenix, 133 percent in Miami, 129 percent in Atlanta, and 99 percent in Dallas. (Over that same stretch, prices in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles have increased by about 75 percent, 76 percent, and 97 percent, respectively).

This trend could prove disastrous. For much of the past half century, suburban sprawl across the Sun Belt was a kind of pressure-release valve for the housing market. People who couldn’t afford to live in expensive cities had other, cheaper places to go. Now even the affordable alternatives are on track to become out of reach for a critical mass of Americans.

The trend also presents a mystery. According to expert consensus, anti-growth liberals have imposed excessive regulations that made building enough homes impossible. The housing crisis has thus become synonymous with feckless blue-state governance. So how can prices now be rising so fast in red and purple states known for their loose regulations?

A tempting explanation is that the expert consensus is wrong. Perhaps regulations and NIMBYism were never really the problem, and the current push to reform zoning laws and building codes is misguided. But the real answer is that San Francisco and New York weren’t unique—they were just early. Eventually, no matter where you are, the forces of NIMBYism catch up to you.

The perception of the Sun Belt as the anti-California used to be accurate. In a recent paper, two urban economists, Ed Glaeser and Joe Gyourko, analyze the rate of housing production across 82 metro areas since the 1950s. They find that as recently as the early 2000s, booming cities such as Dallas, Atlanta, and Phoenix were building new homes at more than four times the rate of major coastal cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York, on average. The fact that millions of people were being priced out of the locations with the best jobs and highest wages—so-called superstar cities—wasn’t ideal. But the Sun Belt building boom kept the coastal housing shortage from becoming a full-blown national crisis.

No longer. Although the Sun Belt continues to build far more housing than the coasts in absolute terms, Glaeser and Gyourko find that the rate of building in most Sun Belt cities has fallen by more than half over the past 25 years, in some cases by much more, even as demand to live in those places has surged. “When it comes to new housing production, the Sun Belt cities today are basically at the point that the big coastal cities were 20 years ago,” Gyourko told me. This explains why home prices in the Sun Belt, though still low compared with those in San Francisco and New York, have risen so sharply since the mid-2010s—a trend that accelerated during the pandemic, as the rise of remote work led to a large migration out of high-cost cities.

In a properly functioning housing market, the post-COVID surge in demand should have generated a massive building boom that would have cooled price growth. Instead, more than five years after the pandemic began, these places still aren’t building enough homes, and prices are still rising wildly.

As the issue of housing has become more salient in Democratic Party politics, some commentators have pointed to rising costs in the supposedly laissez-faire Sun Belt as proof that zoning laws and other regulations are not the culprit. “Blaming zoning for housing costs seems especially blinkered because different jurisdictions in the United States have very different approaches to land use regulations, and yet the housing crisis is a nationwide phenomenon,” the Vanderbilt University law professors Ganesh Sitaraman and Christopher Serkin write in a recent paper. Some argue that the wave of consolidation within the home-building industry following the 2008 financial crisis gave large developers the power to slow-walk development and keep prices high. Others say that the cost of construction has climbed so high over the past two decades that building no longer makes financial sense for developers.”

The article concludes:

“The forces opposed to new development are just as vehemently opposed to the kind of reforms needed to avert a future crisis. Many local and state governments across the Sun Belt have tried and failed to implement lasting pro-housing reforms. But the recent spike in home prices across the region has put even more pressure on lawmakers to act. The Texas legislature recently passed several pieces of legislation that will, among other things, reduce the minimum lot size of new homes, limit the power of the “tyrant’s veto,” and allow multifamily housing to be built on land currently zoned for offices and retail. Red states like to portray themselves as free from the pathologies that have made housing such a problem in other parts of the country. Now they have an opportunity to prove it.”

Interesting info.  The entire article is worth a read.

Tony

Dan Rather

Dear Commons Community,

Legendary former CBS News anchor Dan Rather expressed disappointment yesterday at Paramount Global’s decision to pay $16 million to the Trump administration and settle its lawsuit over a “60 Minutes” report.

“It’s a sad day for journalism,” Rather told Variety. “It’s a sad day for ’60 Minutes’ and CBS News. I hope people will read the details of this and understand what it was. It was distortion by Trump and a kneeling down and saying, ‘yes, sir,’ by billionaire corporate owners.”

Most legal scholars agreed the suit — in which Trump accused “60 Minutes” of deceptively editing an interview with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris — was frivolous and wouldn’t hold up under the First Amendment.

“What really gets me about this is that Paramount didn’t have to settle,” Rather said. “You settle a lawsuit when you’ve done something wrong. ’60 Minutes’ did nothing wrong. It followed accepted journalistic practices. Lawyers almost unanimously said the case wouldn’t stand up in court.”

Rather expressed a full backing of his former colleagues at CBS News and “60 Minutes”: “My support for them is total, absolute,” he said. “I do really think they fought a good fight on this, and they’ll continue to fight. The people on ’60 Minutes’ and at CBS News didn’t just take it lying down. They did their best to stop it.”

Nonetheless, he said he wasn’t shocked by Paramount Global’s settlement. The decision to strike a deal was widely seen as a critical step to receiving approval from the Trump-controlled FCC for Skydance’s $8 billion acquisition of the media conglom.

“I was disappointed, but I wasn’t surprised,” he said. “Big billionaire business people make decisions about money. We could always hope that they will make an exception when it comes to freedom of the press, but it wasn’t to be.

“Trump knew if he put the pressure on and threatened and just held that they would fold, because there’s too much money on the table,” he added. “Trump is now forcing a whole news organization to pay millions of dollars for doing something protected by the Constitution — which is, of course, free and independent reporting. Now, you take today’s sell-out. And that’s what it was: It was a sell-out to extortion by the President. Who can now say where all this ends?”

Rather then pointed to the larger issue of what this means for the United States as a democracy. “It has to do with not just journalism, but more importantly, with the country as a whole,” he said. “What kind of country we’re going to have, what kind of country we’re going to be. If major news organizations continue to kneel before power and stop trying to hold the powerful accountable, then we all lose.

“And then big time law firms have been settling right and left, kneeling the same way,” he said. “Big universities doing the same. Trump is extorting what he wants out of them. Now he’s extorting what he wants out of news organizations. So when I say, ‘Where does this go?’ What are the effects on journalism as a whole?”

Asked what advice he might give the folks at CBS News and “60 Minutes,” Rather humbly said it’s not his place — but that they already know “in their hearts, in their very being, the best things to do. I will say that, I do expect them to fully double down now on whatever great reporting they’re allowed to do.”

In his more than 60 years as a journalist, Rather said he’s never seen the profession face the kind of challenges it’s now up against. “Journalism has had its trials and tribulations before, and it takes courage to just soldier on,” he said. “Keep trying, keep fighting. It takes guts to do that. And I know the people at CBS News, and particularly those at ’60 Minutes,’ they’ll do their dead level best under these circumstances. But the question is what this development and the message it sends to us. And that’s what I’m trying to concentrate on.”

Shame on CBS and “60 Minutes”!

Tony

Zohran Mamdani

Dear Commons Community,

I was alerted to this story by my colleague, David Bloomfield.

Zohran Mamdani has not sketched out a plan to manage the nation’s largest school system yet. But the Queens assemblyman, who won a decisive victory for the Democratic mayoral nomination, has one big idea: giving himself less power.

Since 2002, the state has granted the mayor of New York City almost complete authority over the public school system. The mayor unilaterally selects the schools chancellor and appoints the majority of the Panel for Educational Policy, a board that votes on school closures, contracts, and other major changes to Education Department regulations.

Most mayoral candidates this year said they support mayoral control, though some suggested tweaks. Every mayor has lobbied state lawmakers in Albany for extensions to mayoral control since it was enacted more than two decades ago. Mamdani, a 33-year-old Democratic socialist, has vowed to be an exception to that rule.  As reported by Chalkbeat/New York.

“Zohran supports an end to mayoral control and envisions a system instead in which parents, students, educators and administrators work together,” his campaign website states. In its place, he calls for a “co-governance” model that empowers existing organizations, such as elected parent councils and local school teams that include administrators, teachers, and caregivers.

Mamdani’s plan would represent a fundamental shift in school governance at a time when the system faces many pressing issues, including elevated rates of chronic absenteeism, declining enrollment, and persistent gaps in student achievement.

“That’s a signal that he’s thinking about this in a very different way than the typical mayoral hopeful,” said Jonathan Collins, a professor of political science and education at Columbia University Teachers College. “Not too many politicians have been in the business of giving power away.”

Mamdani could also be forced to confront local decisions he may disagree with; Manhattan’s District 2, for instance, passed a controversial resolution in 2024 calling for a review of the city’s policy of allowing transgender girls to join girls’ sports teams.

“Is Mamdani really willing to go down roads like that?” said David Bloomfield, a professor of education, law, and public policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center.

Bloomfield, who previously served as the general counsel for the city’s Board of Education before mayoral control, added that Mamdani’s pitch for “co-governance” may be a winning campaign message because it has a populist appeal to make the system more democratic.

“It is a signal of a mindset more than an operational plan,” he said.

Good comment from Bloomfield.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading Lost for Words:  The Hidden History of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) by Lynda Mugglestone..  This is the third book I have read about the OED this year. See: https://apicciano.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2025/05/27/book-the-meaning-of-everything-by-simon-winchester/ and https://apicciano.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2025/04/23/new-book-the-dictionary-of-lost-words-by-pip-williams/

Lost for Words…was published in  2005 and is meant as a scholarly treatment of the topic.  It took me a while to read its 200-plus pages.  Ms. Mugglestone does a fine job of explaining its history with many details that require very careful reading and rereading.  Regardless, I found it interesting and am glad that I stuck with it. Because it was published twenty years ago finding a review was difficult.  Below  are three brief comments about the book courtesy of Goodreads.

Tony

————————————

Goodreads

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) holds a cherished position in English literary culture. The story behind the creation of what is indisputably the greatest dictionary in the language has become a popular fascination. This book looks at the history of the great first edition of 1928, and at the men (and occasionally women) who distilled words and usages from centuries of English writing and “through an act of intellectual alchemy captured the spirit of a civilization.”

The task of the dictionary was to bear full and impartial witness to the language it recorded. But behind the immaculate typography of the finished text, the proofs tell a very different story. This vast archive, unexamined until now, reveals the arguments and controversies over meanings, definitions, and pronunciation, and which words and senses were acceptable—and which were not.

Lost for Words examines the hidden history by which the great dictionary came into being, tracing—through letters and archives—the personal battles involved in charting a constantly changing language. Then as now, lexicographers reveal themselves vulnerable to the prejudices of their own linguistic preferences and to the influence of contemporary social history.

A pleasant, thoroughly researched and very dense book on the O.E.D., which I would solely recommend to specialists, wordsmiths and people with a fervent, not passing, interest in the development of the dictionary as we know it today.

Intense and written with authority and passion by a woman who knows her subject. The research is mind boggling. I absolutely recommend this for anyone who truly loves books and language studies. It’s not an easy read, for sure, but well worth the effort if you are a lover of libraries as I am.

Courtesy of USA Today.

Dear Commons Community,

Elon Musk escalated his criticism of President Donald Trump’s tax and budget mega-bill as the Senate took up the legislation, warning that he would boost primary challenges to defeat Republican lawmakers who vote for the legislation.

Musk, the richest man in the world and former top White House adviser, unleashed a flurry of posts on June 30 on X attacking the bill, the centerpiece of Trump’s domestic agenda, over the tech entrepreneur’s well-documented concerns the bill will increase the national debt.  As reported by USA Today.

“Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame!” Musk wrote. “And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.”

Musk’s new round of criticism, which started over the weekend, came after he had taken steps to repair his strained relationship with the president ‒ including personally apologizing for insults he made during his combative exit from the Trump administration last month. Musk led the government-slashing Department of Government Efficiency for the first four-plus months of Trump’s second term before leaving in late May.

In another X post, Musk renewed his call for a new political party. “It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS that we live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!!” Musk said. “Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people.”

He also singled out two Republican members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus ‒ Reps. Andy Harris of Maryland and Chip Roy of Texas ‒ whose votes could be needed for House to give final approval of the bill.

“How can you call yourself the Freedom Caucus if you vote for a DEBT SLAVERY bill with the biggest debt ceiling increase in history? @RepAndyHarrisMD @chiproytx,” Musk said in another X post.

Republicans, who hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, are set to vote on what Trump has dubbed his “big, beautiful bill,” after finishing a whirlwind of votes nicknamed a “vote-a-rama” on dozens of amendments. The process could take several hours.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects Trump’s reconciliation bill would add $3.3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade by extending the president’s tax cuts that he first implemented in 2017. The bill would also cut 11.8 million people from Medicaid by 2034, according to the CBO, and cut funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, by nearly $300 billion.

Musk pumped nearly $290 million into the 2024 election to help Trump and other Republican candidates, making him the largest donor, by far, of the election cycle.

However, ahead of his departure from DOGE, Musk suggested he would cease his political spending as he shifts his attention back to his companies, Tesla and SpaceX.

“I think in terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the future,” Musk said on May 20 at the Bloomberg News at the Qatar Economic Forum. “I think I’ve done enough.”

Musk is trying to atone for all of the political damage he has already done.  

Tony