The New Republic

60 Minutes correspondent Cecilia Vega was fired while she was in the midst of a feature on Francesca Albanese, U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories—perhaps the most prominent institutional voice against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

“Cecilia Vega and her team were indeed working on a report for CBS examining the impact of the U.S. sanctions on my work and personal life, including developments in the U.S. courts,” Albanese wrote on X Thursday morning, confirming reporting from Zeteo. “I am sorry they were punished.”

Vega was fired by CBS head Bari Weiss at the end of May, along with Sharyn Alfonsi—who lambasted Weiss’s decision to push back her report on the notoriously inhumane CECOT megaprison in El Salvador—executive producer Tanya Simon, and executive editor Draggan Mihailovich.

The timing of Vega’s firing is extremely questionable given that Weiss and CBS owner David Ellison are staunch Zionists aligned with the Trump administration. Albanese has been sanctioned by the United States, has had multiple European countries call for her resignation, and has faced a wave of personal attacks online for her Palestinian advocacy.

President Donald Trump’s attempt to explain his sudden “love” for high inflation just made things so much worse.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office Wednesday, Trump brushed off a bleak inflation report finding that America’s annual inflation rate had reached its highest levels in three years.

“The numbers were great. You know what I really love? I love the inflation,” Trump said.

Speaking on the phone with the New York Post later that day, Trump claimed he’d been taken out of context. “I love the inflation numbers because of what I’m talking about,” he said.

“The numbers are going to be phenomenal because what’s showing is that despite the fact that we’re in a war, the numbers are much lower than anticipated, and when we’re out of that war, the numbers will be at lower numbers than they were even before it started,” Trump claimed.

Inflation is not any lower than anticipated. Last month, a group of economists surveyed by Bloomberg estimated the consumer price index would rise to 3.9 percent. The Organization for Economic Cooperation raised its prediction up from 3 to 4.2 percent. Per Wednesday’s Bureau of Labor Statistics report, the current inflation rate is 4.2 percent.

Still, Trump attempted to repackage the fastest-growing inflation in three years as better than it could’ve been and a sign of good things to come. That’s not good enough for Americans who are struggling to pay for gas, rent, and groceries because of a reckless war with no end in sight.

Trump also dismissed Democrats who’d criticized his gushing over high inflation.

“They’re so bad,” Trump said. “I was talking about inflation numbers that will be so good as soon as the war ends. The numbers will come way down, that’s what I’m talking about.

“I’m always taken out of context,” the president continued. “My inflation numbers will be very low as soon as the war—they’re already very low, but they’ll be very low, because you know the energy brings them up a little bit, because we have to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon.”

Of course, that doesn’t even begin to qualify as being taken out of context. It was Trump who elided the actual context of the question: the current inflation rate. Not future numbers, or predictions, but the painful reality that Americans are literally paying the price for Trump’s wildly unpopular war. Was he concerned? No, he was delighted.

If anything, the president’s baffling remarks have handed Democrats a winning message for the midterm elections: Trump loves inflation, and thinks that anyone whose struggle to make ends meet should thank him that things aren’t worse.

He never expected to become famous and certainly never admitted to wanting to be famous. He’d studied men like John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, who had sought fame and described its strange, arbitrary workings. But by the time Matt Damon name-checked Gordon S. Wood on “the pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization” in Good Will Hunting, Wood had long since become a lightning rod for his fellow historians and the much greater number of others who drafted the American Revolution into the culture wars.

The Brown University professor chuckled about that scene in the film, a story of a working-class Bostonian who mocks a Harvard graduate student as likely to take Wood’s interpretations as gospel only to drop them the very next year. After all, as a Harvard Ph.D. from working-class Concord, Massachusetts, Gordon Wood had been both of these types and more, while keeping a professorial distance from all. No one could say whether, when he repeated the story of how former House Speaker Newt Gingrich handed out copies of his Radicalism of the American Revolution to new members of the Republican caucus, he had been bragging, trolling, or just reading the room.

The prolific historian of early America burst onto the scene 60 years ago with an essay in the field’s flagship journal titled “Rhetoric and Reality in the American Revolution.” Two schools of interpretation had been battling for some time: “neo-whigs,” who saw the patriots as motivated by “constitutional principles,” versus “progressives,” who saw them as motivated by profound socioeconomic change, for all their rhetoric about liberties. Wood, who had been reading up on social theory, brilliantly arbitrated that debate, maintaining that declining opportunities inspired men to fear what changing imperial politics could do to them and their status as provincial Britons. The Revolution had been conservative in its impulses, even if it had unanticipated radical results. Historians needed a “behaviorist” approach that saw revolutionary rhetoric as “psychological” reality.

Wood discovered a remarkable knack for explaining how ideas could be new and old, innovative and conservative, at the same time.

In his own way, Wood opened up the understanding of the Revolution to feelings as well as thoughts, to ideology as well as theory. Meanwhile, he was revising his Harvard doctoral thesis, which became The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787. Published in 1969, this pointillist, essayistic yet comprehensive study tracked how understandings of political structure, including the very idea of constitutions, changed under the pressure of revolutionary war and the formation of state governments. An American revision of classical and seventeenth-century English republicanism informed the fledgling republics. In 1787, experience moderated the democratic spirit of ’76. Wood discovered a remarkable knack for explaining how ideas could be new and old, innovative and conservative, at the same time—and how creative political thinking advanced best under the sometimes self-deceiving cover of restoration.

Out of irrationality could come a higher rationality, though not without ironic results. For example, John Adams’s tough-minded insistence that constitutional structures had to reflect the existence of social classes, including aristocrats and plebes, in order to balance them, made him “irrelevant” when enough Americans agreed to disagree, or at least to stop talking about, whether such classes did or should exist.

Wood exaggerated Adams’s unpopularity, but in doing so drove home the sobering point that American republicanism, tending toward Herrenvolk democracy, would have a lot of trouble dealing with the relationship between economic inequality and political power. The course of the 1780s led toward a Madisonian “science of politics” that saved the nation from revolutionary excess yet sought to bury rather than reflect or address economic conflict in its schemes of federalism and representation, creating an American political tradition that couldn’t deal honestly with class or money.

With this flourish, the 35-year old assistant professor performed an acclaimed scholarly triple axel, fashioning a learned interpretation of American origins that seemed to have something for everyone, which was no easier in 1969 than today. At great length and sophistication, he’d offered something to those inclined to celebrate the Constitution, something to those who criticized it, and much to those looking for some way between. The republic, simply put, was moderate yet innovative, advanced and yet caught up in self-deception. Some of the founders were brilliant, yes, but maybe only slightly more so than Gordon S. Wood, who figured out what they knew, what they did, and what they had barely perceived.

Some of the founders were brilliant, yes, but maybe only slightly more so than Gordon S. Wood, who figured out what they knew, what they did, and what they had barely perceived.

Wood caught and rode a wave of sophistication about the workings of ideology. In his hands, disembodied “thought” became culture and politics and made history. One could see it happening in obscure and popular pamphlets, in the plays and newspapers, and in the letters of politicians of the late eighteenth century. Tracing ideological struggle was heady stuff, and the late 1960s and 1970s came to represent something of a golden age for American historians, especially intellectual historians who could claim to explain the motives and worldviews informing critical events. Wood continued to endear himself to scholars with essays that plumbed how understandings of conspiracy and “interests” and “disinterestedness” shaped the debate over the ratification of the Constitution. These turned out to be brilliant middle chapters of his 1991 Pulitzer-winning triptych, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, a work that expanded his interpretation of the emergent American ethos chronologically while keeping republicanism and its tribulations at the center.

“Monarchy” characterized a late colonial era that believed in hierarchy. Social changes undermined those hierarchies in a radically reformative cultural process—“republicanism”— that informed the break from England. Meanwhile, the rise of capitalism further undermined social structures that had never really take strong hold in colonies with more available land and less inherited wealth. Work came to be valued more than lineage; representation in formal, legislative politics mattered more with kings and their appointed governors thrown out. All this dwarfed putative differences between north and south, east and west. The result: The early republic was a society in which democracy and capitalism arose and reinforced each other, much to the disappointment of more rigorously republican politicians who had seen themselves as disinterested men of virtue.

To many readers, Wood had seemingly accounted, in beautiful, measured prose, for both what was radical about the Revolution and why many revolutionaries proceeded to fight for more—or less—of it. One could read Wood as a critic of emergent democracy or even, on the other hand, of capitalism.

Yet as Alfred F. Young, a careful critic, wrote at the time, Wood had not so much distilled the radicalism of the Revolution as magnified it to encompass all of early American history. That sheer interpretative ambition turned out to be an Achilles’ heel. War and violence dissolved in Wood’s egalitarian upsurge. So did settler colonialism and slavery. In the introduction, Wood insisted that it didn’t matter whether political revolution caused or just reflected the social or cultural revolution, and that because it didn’t matter, we should simply credit the radicalism of the revolution for “the anti-slavery and women’s rights movements of the nineteenth century and in fact all our current egalitarian thinking.” This “in fact” made for strange rhetorical alchemy as he continued to stress how exceedingly different late–eighteenth century people were from later Americans.

By the new century, Wood had already begun to complain publicly about a tendency to judge eighteenth-century Americans by what he deemed “presentist” standards. A tense divide over his sometimes enigmatic work and persona ensued, especially among liberals and leftists. Wood’s tendency to lump all Americans together greatly irked a generation of social historians who made regional, class, and urban-rural differences their bread and butter and who worried much less than he did about how to pull American diversity and conflict, not to mention imperial reach, into a common national story. (In a tone-perfect illustration of Wood’s changing reputation among academics, in the 1997 film, Will Hunting first baits the graduate student with the above précis of Wood on radicalism, only to interrupt his predictable response: the regurgitation of a social historian’s comment on how Wood “drastically underestimates the impact of social distinctions predicated upon wealth, especially inherited wealth.”)

Worse, there were very few women, Black people, or Indians in his expansive, transformative, century-long radical revolution. How radical could that be, then? Yet Wood stuck to his guns, even doubling down. It remained “anachronistic” to ask why the patriots didn’t end slavery even as they complained about their political enslavement. Slavery was never questioned until the revolutionaries began to question it, he argued. Those folks simply weren’t part of the American conversation then: The founders didn’t think or talk about them, didn’t consider them as a subject of politics. This explanation held less water when his own definition of revolutionary politics had expanded to include almost everything else besides race and sex.

Wood laid a foundation for a distinctive, genteel kind of “founders” history: one that keeps a quiet distance from uncritical flag-waving by emphasizing at every turn how different the eighteenth century was, still while insisting that everything good about the United States emanated from the founding, even if ironically and unintentionally. Too aware to ignore the threat that alternative histories posed to his mountain of scholarship, he slammed those that bid to take down founder worship, to add other groups to the pantheon of founders, or to dwell on the inegalitarian aspects of what the founders created. He issued a few occasional mild dissents against ahistorical constitutional originalism, but punched left a lot harder and more often than he punched right.

In books like Empire of Liberty, his 2009 entry in the Oxford History of the United States series, and his career-summing Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution (2021), Wood foregrounded the most optimistic and forward-looking revolutionaries, like Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, whose understanding of the Revolution as a transformative event in world history seemed to prove his case. His admiration for “the revolutionary generation”—which had once been a minor, more implicit theme in his scholarship, mitigated by the vast distance he discerned between their world and ours—swelled when he confronted those who identified strongly against a past construed as backwards and racist. Republishing the many review essays he wrote for venues like The New Republic and The New York Review of Books, he added afterwords that cast further aspersions on historians who forwarded their “preoccupation” with race, class, and gender, or failed to preserve the requisite balance and appreciation for the Revolution, where Americans go “to refresh and reaffirm our nationhood.”

Like a number of our best historians—and politicians—he insisted we hang on, for dear national life, to the rhetoric.

Yet after the brouhaha over The 1619 Project, in which he participated as an often-quoted critic, Wood good-naturedly admitted just how much that controversy demonstrated what had been missing from the histories his generation had written.

Americans remain stuck with a revolution we rightly perceive as both radical and conservative. For all his insistence on our revolution’s beneficence and singularity, Gordon Wood helped us see that revolutions are as confusing and contradictory as they are compelling in retrospect and prospect. Their true measure is the never-ending debate over how and whether they remade reality—or just rhetoric. Like a number of our best historians—and politicians—he insisted we hang on, for dear national life, to the rhetoric. “To be an American is not to be someone but to believe in something. And of that something most important is the belief that all men are created equal,” he wrote in a 2019 essay. As it was natural for him to suspect the Revolution’s critics, it’s somewhat tragic that his appreciation of revolutionary minds grappling with possibility could be appropriated for causes he did not fully endorse. No doubt, he appreciated the irony.

President Trump’s Freedom 250 birthday extravaganza is looking so bleak that entire states are pulling out.

NOTUS has reported that Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon, and North Carolina—the last of which Trump won in 2024—have all declined to send a representative to the president’s 16-day fair on the National Mall. Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Washington remain undecided even as the fair begins just two weeks from now.

Each state is supposed to have a 600-square-foot themed booth with a representative or official sent by state leadership. With these states declining to send one, the administration has decided to pick their own. Multiple states said they had no knowledge as to who was chosen to represent their homes or why.

Other states noted the hefty price attached to the event. Michele Walker, the comms director of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, told NOTUS her state would have to spend a minimum of $100,000 on travel, hotels, and their themed booth all together.

“We decided early in the process that we do not have the capacity to participate,” Walker said. “Our limited resources are focused on America250 events across North Carolina.”

This news comes just a week after nearly all of the first wave of musical performers—from Young MC to the Commodores—dropped out as well. This lack of enthusiasm only reaffirms that this “Freedom 250” event, unlike the educational America250 commission, is just a birthday party for Trump.

President Trump is threatening a ground invasion of Iran.

On Truth Social Thursday morning, Trump posted that the U.S. military “will be hitting Iran (Whose Navy, Air Force, Radar, Anti Aircraft, and all other forms of Defense, together with most of its offensive capability, are GONE!), VERY HARD TONIGHT.

“At some point in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island, and other oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets, much like we have with Venezuela, which is working out brilliantly for both Venezuela and the United States of America. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP,” the post read.

Trump’s threats are an alarming escalation, especially considering he previously claimed the U.S. and Iran are close to a deal to end the war. Publicly announcing plans for such an attack also carries risks, as it puts U.S. troops in harm’s way and gives Iran time to prepare countermeasures. Trump could also be bluffing, thinking that the specter of a ground invasion of Iranian territory will force concessions.

That seems to be in line with what he told Fox & Friends Thursday morning. Trump was asked about the post, and complained about media coverage of Iran, claiming the country has been decimated but that news outlets such as The New York Times, CNN, and The Wall Street Journal say that it’s doing well.

“They’re dying to make a deal. They want to make a deal so badly,” Trump said. “We dropped $250 million of bombs on them last night, the whole thing is crazy. And they’re really in submission, they just don’t know it yet.”

Trump on Fox & Friends: "They're dying to make a deal. They want to make a deal so badly. We dropped $250 million of bombs on them last night. They're really in submission. They just don't know it yet." pic.twitter.com/XKW5CGc1CU

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 11, 2026

Trump’s daily accounts of the war with Iran are increasingly incoherent, and it’s tough to tell what’s real and what isn’t. Anything could happen Thursday night, and in the meantime, the world will be watching with uncertainty as a man with visible cognitive decline has his finger on the trigger.

President Donald Trump’s bizarre claim to have secretly moved more than 100 million barrels of oil through the Strait of Hormuz just got shut down by the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

Trump announced Wednesday that he’d directed the military to conduct a “secret mission” to support the flow of energy through the essential trade passageway—as he struggled to justify the U.S. economy reaching its highest annual inflation rate in three years.

Speaking on CNN that night, Connecticut Representative Jim Himes, who serves as ranking member on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, dismissed the president’s claim.

“A lot of that is just flat-out untrue,” Himes said.

CNN: What do you know about what he's saying that Iran didn't until right now didn’t know that we're taking millions of barrels of oil. And this 100 million barrels that Trump says he's actually helped get through the strait.

Himes: A lot of that is just flat out untrue. Let's… pic.twitter.com/IamnOmqSfB

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 10, 2026

“And remember the record here, right. This war was going to be over in a couple of days. For the last three months the Iranians have been two or three days, or maybe a week or two weeks away from striking a deal,” Himes said. “So, let’s just agree that the president has precisely zero credibility on anything that he says about the Iran war.

“But look, you don’t need to be an intelligence expert to understand that in the Strait of Hormuz, you’re not moving anything in secret. With a good pair of binoculars on either coast you can see what’s happening.”

Himes isn’t the only one calling B.S. on the president’s claims: Energy Secretary Chris Wright appeared not to have a clue what Trump was talking about, either.

When asked about the 100 million barrels of oil during a House committee hearing Wednesday, Wright appeared confused and said he was “unaware” of the operation.

“I do not think the president is lying, I think the president is talking casually about our efforts to stop the flow of Iranian oil,” Wright claimed, though Trump was clearly talking about oil that had made it out of the strait, not oil that had been blocked.

Donald Trump’s health has hit a new milestone.

The president’s latest examination at Walter Reed Medical Center on May 26 reportedly involved 22 specialists, reported The Washington Post. That puts Trump at a dozen specialists beyond the previous record held by George W. Bush, who once saw 10 specialists in one go.

The White House has not elaborated on exactly why Trump needed so many doctors. Trump officials told the Post that the unconventionally large medical team allowed for a “complete and preventive evaluation” of the president. White House physician Sean Barbabella commented that the assessment found Trump in “excellent health.”

“The involvement of multiple specialists reflects a comprehensive, multidisciplinary evaluation consistent with best practices for executive-level medical care,” the White House said in a statement.

Nonetheless, the figure has contributed to yet more intrigue about Trump’s health as he nears his 80th birthday.

“It is an extraordinary number,” Jonathan Reiner, a longtime cardiologist for former Vice President Dick Cheney, told the Post. “What specialties do they represent? Why so many?”

Trump is the second-oldest man to ever serve as America’s commander in chief, and his increasingly erratic behavior has sparked global concern in recent weeks about his stability and judgment. The 79-year-old has spent hours at Walter Reed Medical Center on multiple occasions over the last nine months, fallen asleep during more than a dozen critical meetings, seemed lost and disoriented around foreign heads of state, frequently slurred his speech, and appeared with discolored and bruised skin on several occasions.

His behavior has also grown increasingly erratic, as he has thrown cheap and petty insults at members of the press, challenged long-standing U.S. alliances, and even taken jabs at the pope.

The American public is apparently wising up to Trump’s age: A Washington Post–ABC News–Ipsos poll released last month found that 59 percent of Americans do not believe that Trump has the mental acuity to lead the country.