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Vox
8 hours ago
- Politics
- Vox
What the '12-day war' teaches us about Trump's foreign policy
is a senior politics correspondent at Vox, covering the White House, elections, and political scandals and investigations. He's worked at Vox since the site's launch in 2014, and before that, he worked as a research assistant at the New Yorker's Washington, DC, bureau. When President Donald Trump announced late Saturday that he ordered the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, critics on both the left and the right feared a spiral into a wider war. Yet just two days later, Trump announced a ceasefire deal between Israel and Iran that he claimed would end what he called 'the 12-day war' entirely. And though this ceasefire looked quite fragile at first, three days later, it's still holding. There's much we still don't know about whether Trump's strikes were successful in their short-term objective of disabling Iran's nuclear program. And of course, the long-term consequences of the war for Iran and the region are very far from clear. The past week's events did, however, clarify some things about Trump and his approach to foreign policy in his second term. Specifically, though Trump attacked Iran's nuclear program, he quickly pivoted to a ceasefire, suggesting that he's still wary of the hawks' transformational 'regime change' ambitions. He instead prefers to deal with countries' existing leaders at the negotiating table — and views military force as a tool to get himself a better deal. At first, it seemed that Trump had handed hawks on the right a decisive victory. Sweeping aside the concerns of the 'America First' faction that urged restraint and feared entanglement in a new 'forever war,' Trump supported Israel's attack on Iran and then sent US bombers in as well. But what Trump did next is just as revealing. Though the Iranian government was badly weakened, and some hawks were hoping it could be toppled, Trump demurred, dismissing Iran's retaliation against the US Monday as inconsequential and working to put together a ceasefire. That is, he had an opportunity to push onward for regime change in Tehran but turned it down. Then, when it looked like the new ceasefire might not hold, Trump profanely berated both Iran and Israel and particularly urged Israel to scale back a retaliatory mission that was in progress. After Israel complied, Trump did a solid for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a Truth Social post urging Israeli authorities to cancel Netanyahu's corruption trial. Finally, Trump also declared the US strikes a complete success, insisting that Iran's nuclear program has been wiped out and disputing leaked intelligence estimates that say otherwise. He seems uninterested in hawkish arguments that he hasn't finished the job. This week, administration officials have even tried to restart nuclear talks with Iran, unlikely as that may seem. All this suggests that, despite bombing the nuclear sites, Trump has not embraced open-ended war as US foreign policy just yet. He rolled the dice on a risky military operation — but remained intent on avoiding a wider war. He supported Israel — but then, when he wanted the war to stop, called the Israelis out. It also suggests that Trump, unlike the GOP's more hawkish faction, is uninterested in seeking transformational regime change in Iran. Despite a Truth Social post on Sunday (after the strikes and before the ceasefire) in which Trump suggested 'Regime change' might be a possibility, he didn't go through with it. During his first presidential run, Trump trashed George W. Bush's Iraq War as a debacle, and the collapse of Iran's government would likely bring similar turmoil. Rather, Trump would prefer to settle things at the negotiating table, and he continues to view military action like his strikes on Iran as another way to enhance his leverage there. If negotiations aren't going the way he likes, however, dropping bombs is still a card he could play — or at least, that's what he wants his negotiating partner to fear. As I wrote before the US struck Iran, Trump has some wariness toward the hawks, but he's not a dove or a peacenik: If he's persuaded a military action will go well and make him look strong and successful, he's happy to endorse it. It is clear, though, that he continues to be wary of more prolonged wars that could go poorly. So for now at least, Trump appears to lack the appetite for a prolonged, costly, and painful war. He approved the Iran strikes because he thought Iran had been so weakened that he could get away with them, with limited consequences to Americans. But just as soon as he approved them, he hastened to wrap up the conflict.
Vox
14 hours ago
- Politics
- Vox
What the ‘12-day war' teaches us about Trump's foreign policy
is a senior politics correspondent at Vox, covering the White House, elections, and political scandals and investigations. He's worked at Vox since the site's launch in 2014, and before that, he worked as a research assistant at the New Yorker's Washington, DC, bureau. When President Donald Trump announced late Saturday that he ordered the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, critics on both the left and the right feared a spiral into a wider war. Yet just two days later, Trump announced a ceasefire deal between Israel and Iran that he claimed would end what he called 'the 12-day war' entirely. And though this ceasefire looked quite fragile at first, three days later, it's still holding. There's much we still don't know about whether Trump's strikes were successful in their short-term objective of disabling Iran's nuclear program. And of course, the long-term consequences of the war for Iran and the region are very far from clear. The past week's events did, however, clarify some things about Trump and his approach to foreign policy in his second term. Specifically, though Trump attacked Iran's nuclear program, he quickly pivoted to a ceasefire, suggesting that he's still wary of the hawks' transformational 'regime change' ambitions. He instead prefers to deal with countries' existing leaders at the negotiating table — and views military force as a tool to get himself a better deal. At first, it seemed that Trump had handed hawks on the right a decisive victory. Sweeping aside the concerns of the 'America First' faction that urged restraint and feared entanglement in a new 'forever war,' Trump supported Israel's attack on Iran and then sent US bombers in as well. But what Trump did next is just as revealing. Though the Iranian government was badly weakened, and some hawks were hoping it could be toppled, Trump demurred, dismissing Iran's retaliation against the US Monday as inconsequential and working to put together a ceasefire. That is, he had an opportunity to push onward for regime change in Tehran but turned it down. Then, when it looked like the new ceasefire might not hold, Trump profanely berated both Iran and Israel and particularly urged Israel to scale back a retaliatory mission that was in progress. After Israel complied, Trump did a solid for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a Truth Social post urging Israeli authorities to cancel Netanyahu's corruption trial. Finally, Trump also declared the US strikes a complete success, insisting that Iran's nuclear program has been wiped out and disputing leaked intelligence estimates that say otherwise. He seems uninterested in hawkish arguments that he hasn't finished the job. This week, administration officials have even tried to restart nuclear talks with Iran, unlikely as that may seem. All this suggests that, despite bombing the nuclear sites, Trump has not embraced open-ended war as US foreign policy just yet. He rolled the dice on a risky military operation — but remained intent on avoiding a wider war. He supported Israel — but then, when he wanted the war to stop, called the Israelis out. It also suggests that Trump, unlike the GOP's more hawkish faction, is uninterested in seeking transformational regime change in Iran. Despite a Truth Social post on Sunday (after the strikes and before the ceasefire) in which Trump suggested 'Regime change' might be a possibility, he didn't go through with it. During his first presidential run, Trump trashed George W. Bush's Iraq War as a debacle,' and the collapse of Iran's government would likely bring similar turmoil. Rather, Trump would prefer to settle things at the negotiating table, and he continues to view military action like his strikes on Iran as another way to enhance his leverage there. If negotiations aren't going the way he likes, however, dropping bombs is still a card he could play — or at least, that's what he wants his negotiating partner to fear. As I wrote before the US struck Iran, Trump has some wariness toward the hawks, but he's not a dove or a peacenik: If he's persuaded a military action will go well and make him look strong and successful, he's happy to endorse it. It is clear, though, that he continues to be wary of more prolonged wars that could go poorly. So for now at least, Trump appears to lack the appetite for a prolonged, costly, and painful war. He approved the Iran strikes because he thought Iran had been so weakened that he could get away with them, with limited consequences to Americans. But just as soon as he approved them, he hastened to wrap up the conflict.
Vox
17 hours ago
- Politics
- Vox
The Supreme Court just imposed a 'Don't Say Gay' regime on every public school in America
is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. He received a JD from Duke University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court. On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled that parents with religious objections to books with LGBTQ+ characters must be allowed to opt their children out of any public school instruction that uses those books. The decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor was handed down along party lines, with all six Republicans in the majority and all three Democrats in dissent. The Mahmoud case highlights the Republican justices' impatience to remake constitutional law in a more socially conservative image, especially in cases involving religion. It is certainly possible for public school instruction to violate a religious child's constitutional rights. The Constitution, for example, forbids government institutions like public schools from coercing students into violating their religious views. As Justice Samuel Alito notes in the Mahmoud opinion, the Constitution would also forbid teachers from openly mocking a student's faith. SCOTUS, Explained Get the latest developments on the US Supreme Court from senior correspondent Ian Millhiser. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. But, as a federal appeals court which previously heard the Mahmoud case warned, we don't actually know whether the Constitution was violated in this case. Although Montgomery County, Maryland, approved several books with LGBTQ+ characters for use in public schools, the lower court found that the record in this case contains no information 'about how any teacher or school employee has actually used any of the Storybooks in the Parents' children's classrooms, how often the Storybooks are actually being used, what any child has been taught in conjunction with their use, or what conversations have ensued about their themes.' Related The Supreme Court is leading a Christian conservative revolution Nevertheless, Alito handed down a fairly broad opinion which is likely to impose substantial new burdens on public schools, and he did so without waiting until the record in this case was more fully developed by lower courts. The result is that many schools may struggle to comply with the new obligations that were just imposed, and most schools are likely to exclude books that introduce queer themes or that even mention LGBTQ+ characters. Why Mahmoud imposes a severe burden on public schools The plaintiffs in Mahmoud include Muslim and Christian parents who do not want their children exposed to these books. And their lawyers came to the Supreme Court with an audacious request — seeking a broad decision that parents who object to any form of classroom instruction on religious grounds must be notified in advance, and be permitted to opt their child out of that instruction. The problem with this request is that schools cannot possibly know, in advance, which religious views are held by which parents, and which books or lessons those parents might find objectionable. In the past, parents have sued school districts objecting, on religious grounds, to lessons that touch on topics as diverse as divorce, interfaith couples, and 'immodest dress.' They've objected to books which expose readers to evolution, pacifism, magic, women achieving things outside of the home, and 'false views of death.' Courts have historically been very cautious about ruling in favor of parents who raise these sorts of objections, in part due to concerns that schools would be overwhelmed by administrative burden. Nevertheless, the Court's decision in Mahmoud largely embraces the plaintiffs' request — Alito orders the school board to notify parents 'in advance whenever one of the books in question or any other similar book is to be used in any way and to allow them to have their children excused from that instruction.' Alito's opinion does not discuss how this rule should apply to parents with more uncommon religious beliefs, but the Constitution forbids the government from treating people with idiosyncratic religious beliefs differently than people with more common beliefs. The upshot is that a school may also need to warn parents if a teacher wants to read from a Harry Potter book (because those books are about magic), or if they want to teach a lesson about a famous pacifist like Martin Luther King Jr. Schools may even need to warn parents if any of their children's teachers are women, just in case a parent objects on religious grounds to women having achievements outside of the home. That said, Alito's opinion is slightly narrower than the Mahmoud plaintiffs' proposed framework. Alito argues that the books at issue are objectionable, not just because they feature LGBTQ+ characters, but because they suggest that certain aspects of queer culture should be 'celebrated.' One of the contested books is a medieval fairy tale about a prince who marries a knight. According to Alito, the book 'relates that 'on the two men's wedding day, the air filled with cheer and laughter, for the prince and his shining knight would live happily ever after.'' Thus, Alito claims, this book is objectionable not because it includes a same-sex wedding, but because it portrays this wedding as a good thing. Under Alito's framework, a book that featured a same-sex wedding without portraying it as desirable might not trigger the new rule. Similarly, Alito would likely permit women to work as teachers without warning parents of their femininity, so long as the teacher does not do anything to celebrate their womanhood or suggest that being a woman who works outside the home is a good thing. Still, schools will likely struggle to determine when they are required to warn parents of a particular lesson under Mahmoud. And schools that draw the line in the wrong place now risk being dragged into an expensive lawsuit. Schools are likely to be reluctant to teach books with queer themes or characters One very likely consequence of Mahmoud is that schools will be very reluctant to teach any lesson that mentions homosexuality, transgender people, or anything else that touches on queer sexuality or gender identity. Mahmoud is likely to impose a Florida-style 'Don't Say Gay' regime on every public school classroom in America. The reason why is fairly straightforward. While it is somewhat unclear how Mahmoud applies to parents who object to fantasy novels or working women, the decision quite clearly limits schools' ability to teach books with queer characters. Nor is it clear when a book crosses the line from merely mentioning a gay character to celebrating some aspect of gay culture. So schools that want to avoid lawsuits will need to exclude these sorts of books from their classroom altogether. Lawyers, meanwhile, have a financial incentive to sue schools that behave more boldly. Federal law typically allows the 'prevailing party' in a civil rights lawsuit to collect attorney's fees from the losing party. And suits enforcing Mahmoud are considered civil rights cases because they arise under the First Amendment's religious liberty provisions. So, lawyers can search for schools that teach books with LGBTQ+ characters, find a parent who objects to those books, and then sue and demand that the school district pay their client's bills. School districts that don't want to be treated like an ATM for anti-LGBTQ+ lawyers, meanwhile, will only be able to avoid these lawsuits by excluding queer-themed books from the classroom entirely.
Vox
19 hours ago
- Politics
- Vox
The Supreme Court's birthright citizenship decision isn't as devastating as you think
is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. He received a JD from Duke University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court. Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett and former Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy talk with President Donald Trump as he arrives to address to a joint session of Congress on March 4, Friday, the Supreme Court released its long-awaited decision in Trump v. CASA, a case challenging President Donald Trump's attempt to strip many Americans of citizenship. The Court handed Trump a narrow victory along party lines, with all six Republicans in the majority and all three Democrats dissenting. The 14th Amendment provides that 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States' are citizens, with one narrow exception that does not arise in CASA, so Trump's executive order trying to strip many babies born in the US of their citizenship is clearly and unambiguously unconstitutional. Multiple lower courts have all reached this same conclusion. SCOTUS, Explained Get the latest developments on the US Supreme Court from senior correspondent Ian Millhiser. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. There are three important takeaways from the CASA opinion: 1) It's not actually about birthright citizenship The specific issue was whether all the lower courts that struck down the Trump anti-citizenship order may issue a 'nationwide injunction,' which would block that order everywhere in the country, or whether they must issue a more narrow injunction that only blocked it in certain states, or for certain families. Justice Amy Coney Barrett's majority opinion concludes that a nationwide injunction is not allowed…sort of. Much of the opinion is about why nationwide injunctions should be impermissible, but a key section suggests that, in this case, one might actually be okay. Specifically, Barrett says that courts may issue injunctions that are broad enough to ensure that a victorious plaintiff receives 'complete relief.' This matters because several of the plaintiffs in this case are blue states that object to Trump's attempt to cancel many Americans' citizenship. And they argued that it would be unworkable if birthright citizenship was the rule in some states, but not others. As Barrett summarizes their arguments, 'children often move across state lines or are born outside their parents' State of residence.' Thus, a ''patchwork injunction' would prove unworkable, because it would require [the states] to track and verify the immigration status of the parents of every child, along with the birth State of every child for whom they provide certain federally funded benefits.' In any event, Barrett does not ultimately say whether she finds this argument persuasive, instead concluding that 'the lower courts should determine whether a narrower injunction is appropriate' in future proceedings. So the holding of CASA seems to be that universal injunctions should be rare, but they are permissible in some cases, including, possibly, this case. 2) The arguments against universal injunctions are serious During the Biden administration, MAGA-aligned federal judges in Texas routinely handed down nationwide injunctions on highly dubious grounds. Indeed, this practice so frustrated Biden's Justice Department that, even after Trump won the 2024 election, Biden's solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogar, filed a brief asking the justices to limit their use. The best argument against these broad orders is that they place too much power in individual judges, and in plaintiffs who can often shape which judge hears their case. As Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in a 2020 opinion, 'there are currently more than 1,000 active and senior district court judges.'In a world with nationwide injunctions, plaintiffs can shop around for the one judge in America who is most likely to be sympathetic to their cause, and potentially secure a court order that no other judge would hand down. The most immediate beneficiary of Friday's decision is Trump, who will now get some relief from nationwide injunctions. And it's notable that the Republican-controlled Supreme Court waited until a Republican was in the White House before cracking down. Nevertheless, the decision in CASA should also benefit future Democratic administrations, assuming that the GOP-controlled Court applies it fairly to presidents of both parties. 3) This decision does not mean that Trump will succeed in killing birthright citizenship As mentioned above, Barrett leaves the door open to a nationwide injunction in this very case. She also suggests that opponents of Trump's anti-citizenship order can bring a class action and obtain relief very similar to a nationwide injunction, although plaintiffs seeking to bring class actions must clear additional procedural bars.
Vox
a day ago
- Health
- Vox
A million kids won't live to kindergarten because of this disastrous decision
is a senior writer at Future Perfect, Vox's effective altruism-inspired section on the world's biggest challenges. She explores wide-ranging topics like climate change, artificial intelligence, vaccine development, and factory farms, and also writes the Future Perfect newsletter. The deadliest country in the world for young children is South Sudan — the United Nations estimates that about 1 in 10 children born there won't make it to their fifth birthday. But just a hundred years ago, that was true right here in the United States: Every community buried about a tenth of their children before they entered kindergarten. That was itself a huge improvement over 1900, when fully 25 percent of children in America didn't make it to age 5. Today, even in the poorest parts of the world, every child has a better chance than a child born in the richest parts of the world had a century ago. Future Perfect Explore the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them. Sent twice a week. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. How did we do it? Primarily through vaccines, which account for about 40 percent of the global drop in infant mortality over the last 50 years, representing 150 million lives saved. Once babies get extremely sick, it's incredibly hard to get adequate care for them anywhere in the world, but we've largely prevented them from getting sick in the first place. Vaccines eradicated smallpox and dramatically reduced infant deaths from measles, tuberculosis, whooping cough, and tetanus. And vaccines not only make babies likelier to survive infancy but also make them healthier for the rest of their lives. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., unfortunately, disagrees. President Donald Trump's secretary of health and human services (HHS), a noted vaccine skeptic who reportedly does not really believe the scientific consensus that disease is caused by germs, recently announced the US will pull out of Gavi, an international alliance of governments and private funders (mainly the Gates Foundation) that works to ensure lifesaving vaccinations reach every child worldwide. His grounds? He thinks Gavi doesn't worry enough about vaccine safety (he does not seem to acknowledge any safety concerns associated with the alternative — dying horribly from measles or tuberculosis).The Trump administration had already slashed its contribution to Gavi as part of its gutting of lifesaving international aid programs earlier this year, leaving any US contributions in significant doubt. But if Kennedy's latest decision holds, it now appears that the US will contribute nothing to this crucial program. The US is one of many funders of Gavi, historically contributing about 13 percent of its overall budget. In 2022, we pledged $2.53 billion for work through 2030, a contribution that Gavi estimates was expected to save about 1.2 million lives by enabling wider reach with vaccine campaigns. That's an incredibly cost-effective way to save lives and ensure more children grow into healthy adults, and it's a cost-effective way to reduce the spread of diseases that will also affect us here in the US. Diseases don't stay safely overseas when we allow them to spread overseas. Measles is highly contagious, and worldwide vaccination helps keep American children safe, too. Tuberculosis is becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics, which makes it harder and more expensive to treat, and widespread vaccination (so that people don't catch it in the first place) is the best tool to ensure dangerous new strains don't develop. It is genuinely hard to describe how angry I am about the casual endangerment of more than a million people because Kennedy apparently thinks measles vaccines are more dangerous than measles is. The American people should be furious about it, too. If other funders aren't able to cover the difference, an enormous number of children will pointlessly die because the US secretary of health and human services happens to be wildly wrong about how diseases work. But the blame won't end with him. It will also fall on everyone else in the Trump administration, and on the senators who approved his appointment in the first place even when his wildly wrong views were widely known, for not caring enough about children dying to have objected. We're destroying the greatest achievements of our civilization for no reason Kennedy, it's worth noting, is not even a long-standing Trump loyalist. He's a kook who hitched his wagon to the Trump train a few months before the election. He doesn't have a huge constituency; it wouldn't have taken all that much political courage for senators to ask for someone else to lead HHS. A lot of his decisions are likely to kill people — from his decision to ban safe, tested food dyes and instead encourage the use of food dyes some people are severely allergic to because they're 'natural' to his courtship of American anti-vaxxers and his steps to undermine accurate guidance on American child vaccination. Trump could still easily override Kennedy on Gavi, if Trump cared about mass death. But if it holds, pulling out of Gavi is likely to be Kennedy's deadliest decision — at least so far. He reportedly may not believe that AIDS is caused by HIV, either, and he can surpass the death toll of this week's decision if he decides to act on that conviction by gutting our AIDS programs in the US and globally. But whether or not the Gavi withdrawal is the deadliest, it certainly stands out for its sheer idiocy. (The Gates Foundation is going to heroic lengths to close the funding gap, and individual donors matter, too: You can donate to Gavi here.) None of this should have been allowed to happen. Since Kennedy's confirmation vote in the Senate passed by a narrow margin with Mitch McConnell as the sole Republican opposing the nomination, every single other Republican senator had the opportunity to prevent it from happening — if they were willing to get yelled at momentarily for demanding that our health secretary understand how diseases work. I am glad the United States does not have the child mortality rates of South Sudan. I'm glad that even South Sudan does not have the child mortality rates of our world in 1900. I'm glad the United States participated in the worldwide eradication of smallpox, and I was glad that we paid our share toward Gavi until the Trump administration slashed funding earlier this year. I'm even glad that mass death is so far in our past that it's possible for someone to be as deluded about disease as Kennedy is. But I am very, very sick of seeing the greatest achievements of our civilization, and the futures of a million children, be ripped to shreds by some of the worst people in politics — not because they have any alternative vision but because they do not understand what they are doing. You've read 1 article in the last month Here at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you — threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country. Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change. We rely on readers like you — join us. 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