Closing with C.I.'s "The Snapshot:"
Two U.S. soldiers were killed and a third service member was missing after an Iranian attack on a base in Jordan on Friday, the U.S. military said. The American troop deaths were the first from hostile fire since a truce in early April.
The Jordanian base came under fire from Iranian ballistic missiles and drones, according to a statement on Saturday from U.S. Central Command. Sixteen U.S. service members have been killed since the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran in February.
Greg Jaffe, Julian E. Barnes and Jonathan Swan (NEW YORK TIMES) observe:
The Iranian attack that killed two U.S. soldiers and left one service member missing on Friday was the fourth in five days on U.S. forces in Jordan, multiple American officials said. Taken together, the attacks have wounded dozens of U.S. service members and damaged a number of helicopters.
The flurry of attacks and the losses they have caused are a sign that Iranian forces not only still have ample missile stocks but have also become more adept at evading U.S. air defense systems, said the U.S. officials, who were speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.
Jordan, which hosts major U.S. air bases, grew in importance in the run-up to and the early days of the war, as the Pentagon shifted a number of troops from Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to relatively more secure locations in Jordan and Israel. The country’s role in U.S. operations has only increased as other American allies in the region have restricted Washington’s ability to base troops in and fly aircraft over their territories, the U.S. officials said.
The Pentagon said on Sunday that a third member of the American military had died during a weekend of intense exchanges of attacks with Iran, as the war escalated and the United States began sending more warplanes to the Middle East.
The soldier was killed in northern Iraq during the disposal of a downed Iranian attack drone on Saturday, the Pentagon said. There was no sign of diplomacy between the two sides, and the U.S. military said Sunday evening Eastern time that it had begun conducting a new wave of strikes against Iran for the ninth consecutive night.
American officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that the United States was sending more military jets to the Middle East, a move that was in the works even before the recent deaths.
The fatalities raised to 17 the number of U.S. military personnel confirmed to have been killed in the war. On Friday, two soldiers were killed in an Iranian missile barrage in Jordan that left another soldier missing. A U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter, said on Sunday that remains recovered at scene were believed to be those of the missing soldier.
After a brief respite, the price of gas is back on the rise.
On Monday, the average price at the pump in the United States climbed to $4 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club, as the war with Iran reignited, halting most shipping and pinching already-depleted global refineries.
The price has surged 13 cents higher from a week ago, when it averaged $3.87 across the country.
Having said that, though, the future looks pretty grim. I mean, we’ve got Trump doing the one thing he said he’d never do: running a war. Knowing what we know about his attention span, his decision-making process, his willed ignorance of history, his refusal to read briefing papers, and his habit of responding to the last thing he saw on Fox News or Newsmax, we have plenty of reason to be worried here—and by “we” I don’t mean liberals or Democrats or even Americans. I mean the world.
Let’s sort through the possible scenarios. Granted, they are extremely unlikely to involve 58,000 American deaths. But Vietnam was probably the largest military tragedy in the history of this country. There are other, less costly ways to lose a war. The United States lost around 4,400 service members in Iraq. That’s miniscule compared to Vietnam, but it’s still a war we largely lost (the military objective of toppling Saddam Hussein was achieved, but at a huge and off-the-books financial cost, and Iraq today is at best a kinda-sorta democracy).
The Wall Street Journal reported July 15 that Trump “is leaning toward expanding U.S. military operations in Iran,” with options including “sending ground forces to seize Iranian islands near the Strait of Hormuz.” The Journal reported that a White House Situation Room meeting was held “to discuss the potential seizure of Kharg Island and other territory along the Strait of Hormuz using U.S. troops.” The journalist Seymour Hersh reported June 10 that Trump asked whether using low-yield nuclear weapons against Iran’s underground missile plants “was doable.”
“The U.S. is planning for a wider war,” a US official familiar with internal administration discussions told the Washington Post in an article published Sunday. The official said the Pentagon is sending more warplanes to the region, but warned that the military is running low on air-defense missiles and long-range strike weapons, and that battle damage limits how many more troops and aircraft can be brought in. “We do not have enough to safely sustain operations, and I don’t think the White House is aware of that,” the official said.
Nearly a week after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent David Brouillette shot and killed Johan (Joan) Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, new details have emerged about the shooter’s history of violence, even as President Donald Trump has restored the very traffic-stop practices that led to Guerrero’s death.
Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian immigrant working legally in the United States with an active asylum case, was shot multiple times through the windshield of his car shortly after 7 a.m. on July 13 at the intersection of Pool and Hill Streets, a block from his home. ICE agents were conducting surveillance related to a warrant for someone else entirely. Durán Guerrero was not the target of the operation. As he tried to drive away, an agent opened fire, killing him in front of neighbors who ran outside to find his wife and young daughter screaming over his body. None of the agents on the scene wore body cameras.
Durán Guerrero’s death came less than a week after ICE agents killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston under nearly identical circumstances, gunning him down as he drove to a construction job with coworkers. Neither man was the target of the operation that killed him.
The back-to-back killings briefly forced Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to order ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division to suspend most vehicle stops while agents received additional training. The pause lasted barely a day.
Trump, who was reportedly not informed of the pause before it was announced, became furious after conservative media personalities cast the decision as a retreat. Steve Bannon used his “War Room” program to denounce Mullin, with guest Mike Davis declaring on air, “You work for President Trump, you don’t work for Senate Democrats, you don’t work for Susan Collins.” Fox personality Tomi Lahren and disgraced former Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino piled on as well.
By Wednesday morning, Trump had posted on Truth Social that ICE’s traffic stops were among agents’ “most important and effective Crime Fighting tools” and ordered them resumed. He declared, “The Radical Left Dumocrats would like to see this done, but it won’t happen on my watch.”
Mullin, who days earlier had ordered the pause, promptly reversed himself, insisting he and Trump were “on the same page.” The about-face came as ICE faced internal pressure to meet Trump’s target of 2,000 arrests a day.
Durán Guerrero’s wife, Karolina Rojas Alvarez, spoke publicly for the first time Thursday at a news conference at the Lincoln Hotel in Biddeford, flanked by her husband’s sister Daniela and Keyko Torres of the immigrant rights group Presente! Maine. Speaking through a translator, with attorney Ben Gideon at her side, she described a devoted partner and father.
“My soul is broken. He was everything to me. He never let me worry about anything,” she said. “He always made me feel like a queen. I never wanted for anything. He gave me more than I ever dreamed of.”
She recalled how her husband doted on their three-year-old daughter from the day she was born, saying, “From the moment he held her in his arms and held her tiny hand, he never let her go.” Now, she said, she cannot bring herself to explain his absence to their daughter. “Now my daughter asks for Papá, and I don’t have the strength to tell her that Papá isn’t coming, that she can’t hug him anymore or tell him, ‘Papi, I love you.’”
All that remains, she said, are photographs and a blanket printed with the three of them together that he had given his daughter weeks before he was killed.
ICE has refused to officially confirm the identity of the agent who killed Durán Guerrero, with a spokesperson describing press efforts to name him as “doxxing.” But the shooter has been identified through multiple independent channels as David Michael Brouillette, 37, of Manchester, Maine. His own ex-wife corroborated reports that he was the killer, saying that he called her to admit he had fired the shots and to ask her to “lie for him” and “cover for his character.”
Elaine covered ICE Friday night in "ICE hires and trains poorly -- to put it mildly:"
Federal agents around the country were told in recent days that the F.B.I. would no longer investigate confrontations with immigration agents — cases that sometimes yield evidence that could be used to prosecute Department of Homeland Security agents implicated in violent encounters, according to people briefed on the decision.
If enacted, such a change would sharply limit law enforcement scrutiny of immigration agents, as the Trump administration draws mounting criticism over killings at the hands of federal officers. In the last two weeks, two fatal shootings by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Texas and Maine have thrust the government’s tactics back into the spotlight.
F.B.I. managers around the country received a written notice informing them of the change on Thursday, according to the people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal communications. The same day, some ICE agents around the country were notified by their F.B.I. counterparts.
The guidance shared with them said that the bureau would stop investigating claims of assaults against Department of Homeland Security agents, the people said. Even though such investigations are intended to determine whether the officers were in fact attacked, they can provide a crucial means of gathering evidence implicating the agents themselves.
Isn't that something Todd Blanche should have brought up Wednesday when he appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee? Instead, he and the administration have kept this on the down low. Sarah N. Lynch (CBS NEWS) adds:
When HSI was tasked with leading the federal investigation into the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January, with the help of the FBI, the decision raised questions among current and former federal law enforcement officials.
After concerns were raised, the FBI and the Civil Rights Division were ordered to take the lead on the probe. That investigation remains ongoing.
HSI is not typically tasked with investigating officer-involved shootings and is not structured or equipped to handle core elements of such cases, including ballistics analysis, forensic processing, firearm examinations, video review and large-scale witness canvassing.
No, Homeland Security should not be investigating themselves and, no, they are not trained for these kind of investigations. This is yet another attempt to bury and skirt responsibility. These are mistakes and errors that are owned by Markwayne Mullen who has been Secretary of Homeland Security since March.
An ICE detention center employee shot a woman on Thursday night after a protest outside an ICE facility in Aurora, Colorado, according to an Aurora Police Department statement released Friday afternoon. The center is operated by the private prison firm GEO Group, the largest recipient of private contracts with ICE to run immigration detention centers.
A GEO Group employee, Brandon Booth, was arrested on suspicion of attempted second-degree murder and other charges. The woman, who investigators said was part of the protest, was injured and taken to the hospital but is expected to survive. Another woman who was with her was not hurt.
According to the Aurora Police Department, Booth and other GEO Group staff were unable to enter the facility due to the protest. The two women argued with the employees and began walking away after taking photos of their cars. Booth then took out a personal firearm and fired one shot at the two women, hitting one of them in her lower body, before getting back into his car and driving away.
Josh Marcus (INDEPENDENT) notes:
He was subsequently arrested on probable cause on suspicion of attempted second-degree murder, first-degree assault, attempted first-degree assault, felony menacing and unlawful carrying of a concealed weapon.
[. . .]
Magistrate Judge Kyle Martelon set Booth’s bond at $500,000.
“To say this is a grave risk to our community would be a vast understatement,” Martelon reportedly said in court.
In its nationwide immigration crackdown, the Trump administration has charged hundreds of people with assaulting or impeding federal agents. President Trump has branded them “insurrectionists,” “animals” and “thugs,” part of a broader effort by his administration to cast protesters and immigrants as violent criminals.
But a close examination of those cases reveals that in its rush to meet White House demands for deportations, federal law enforcement has engaged in extensive misconduct — ranging from attacking protesters to destroying evidence and misrepresenting facts in court.
The New York Times found that the Trump administration has filed assault charges against more than 550 people who were caught in its immigration dragnet — far more than previously known. Of the more than 400 cases resolved so far, nearly half have unraveled: Juries acquitted defendants, judges threw out charges, or prosecutors withdrew them.
The record is abysmal by the typical standards of federal prosecutions: The Justice Department seldom loses criminal cases, with more than 90 percent of defendants pleading guilty or being convicted at trial.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mr. Homan, we saw that two immigrants were shot in the span of a week. There was that one in Maine that was fatal just days after another one in Houston. We also saw that man fleeing agents in Florida, who then was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer.
I know you've been trying to keep the department out of the headlines ever since that streak in Minnesota that was deadly. How do you respond to those who say, what's happening now looks like very little has changed?
TOM HOMAN: Well, you know, first of all, we'll wait and see what the investigations – how they play out, right. Because, you know, I don't want to get ahead of an investigation on who's at fault, what exactly happened because we all know, when these investigations happen, there's going to be cell phone video, there may be city cameras, and, of course, then you got witness statements and affidavits from the officer and witnesses. So, we've got to let the investigations play out. So I don't really want to comment on the investigations themselves.
"I don't want to get ahead of an investigation on who's at fault," he declares before going on the blame the dead civilian drivers and insist that they should have stopped due to the flashing lights. Brennan noted that in the videos, there were no flashing lights at which point Homan admits he didn't see the videos.
But he's talking about the situation as though he did and doing so afere he says "I don't want to get ahead of an investigation on who's at fault."
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes. But these were fatal shootings, of course, in Houston and in Maine. And in Houston, it was an unmarked car. So, when you're saying, don't resist, these individuals who were chasing the man who died, they didn't have markings on that vehicle that would allow for him to know that they were ICE. It just looked like a car coming after them in the videos.
TOM HOMAN: No. They have emergency lights. Officers have insignia. So, when they get out of that car and approach the car, you can clearly see they're law enforcement officers. They can't – this is – these people –
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, in the video that has been public, it's not a marked car.
Murray: “People choose Traditional Medicare because they want to make their health care decisions with their doctor—not with a private company that’s out to make a profit.”
ICYMI: Murray, Cantwell Introduce Resolution to Overturn A.I.-Driven Program That’s Overruling WA Doctors & Delaying Care for Seniors
***WATCH: Senator Murray’s full speech***
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and a senior member and former chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), spoke on the Senate floor ahead of a vote on her Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to overturn a new pilot program implemented by the Trump administration that’s using artificial intelligence (AI) to conduct prior authorization in Traditional Medicare to deny or delay certain procedures for seniors.
In December last year, Senator Murray introduced the Seniors Deserve SMARTER (Streamlined Medical Approvals for Timely, Efficient Recovery) Care Act, legislation that would prohibit the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) from implementing the Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction (WISeR) model that began on January 1, 2026 and is set to last for six years in six selected states, including Washington state.
Senator Murray’s remarks, as delivered, are below:
“I wanted to talk today about not just how Republicans are making health care more expensive, but also how they are making it just plain worse for seniors. President Trump came into office saying that he wouldn’t cut Medicare. But that was clearly a lie. Because right now, his administration is trying to privatize Medicare—in part, by putting AI between Medicare beneficiaries and their health care!
“In January of this year—under Secretary Kennedy’s and Dr. Oz’s leadership—CMS began this pilot program that uses AI to require prior authorization in Traditional Medicare. For the first time ever. And it is set to run for 6 years. They call it the Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction model—well, they got the wasteful and inappropriate part right!
“The ‘WISeR’ Model uses AI to deny vulnerable seniors the care they need and that their doctors recommend. Not only that, but the for-profit contractors that conduct this prior authorization are paid a percentage of the cost of care that they deny. They are literally incentivized to rip health care away from seniors because that is better for their bottom line. When your business model relies on denials, denials are what seniors are going to get—and that is perverse.
“WISeR was rolled out in the beginning of this year in my home state of Washington and five other states, without safeguards, and without any transparency, and without the best interest of Medicare beneficiaries at the heart of the program.
“President Trump is saying: forget the doctors who went to medical school and took an oath to do no harm—AI knows better when it comes to health care decisions for our seniors. The consequences of that poor judgement are real and they are life threatening.
“I hear from Medicare patients in Washington state all the time who are suffering in debilitating pain for weeks because they are not getting the care they need, thanks to this harmful model.
“Patients like Joanne—she’s a Medicare beneficiary from Quilcene, Washington. She went to her doctor for severe pain and an MRI showed that a herniated disc was pressing on her sciatic nerve. Joanne’s doctor prescribed an epidural injection to help ease that pain. This was standard, routine care—care that, before this year, she would have been able to get quickly after it had been recommended by her doctor.
“But because of this WISeR model, she had to wait 6 weeks to get approval. That means that thanks to WISeR, Joanne had to deal with unnecessary, un[treated] pain for six weeks. Because of this nonsense delay, her day-to-day life was disrupted—and the burden fell on her then to fight for the care she needed.
“This is simply outrageous! But that is also WISeR working by design. And that is a direct impact of the Trump administration’s actions.
“We’ve seen way too many stories like Joanne’s from states that have been selected for this pilot program—no way should an algorithm decide if seniors should get the care that they need.
“That’s why I joined my colleagues in introducing a resolution to overturn this model. And I want all of my colleagues to join me in voting for it so we can make sure seniors in my state and all over this country can once again receive their health care on time, without interruption.
“Let’s just use our common sense: it is clear as day that some AI model should never be at the wheel making health care decisions left and right.
“And it’s not just patients I hear from, I’ve met with health care providers all over my state. Whether it’s a rural hospital or a doctor in Seattle—no one has had anything good to tell me about prior authorization in Traditional Medicare.
“Now I ran for office exactly because I believe regular people deserve a say in how their government is run—and that is especially true when it comes to the government deploying AI technology.
“I don’t know any senior, Republican or Democrat, who asked President Trump to let AI decide if their doctor-recommended treatment was necessary. Of course, AI can help make things more efficient or do good things, but that’s not what the WISeR model is doing!
“So, let’s get to the crux of it, as a country, we make a promise to American seniors: if they paid their taxes throughout their careers, they earned their Medicare coverage. Full stop. WISeR breaks that promise to seniors with these senseless, AI driven prior authorizations that deny and delay care.
“Let me be clear, many seniors choose traditional Medicare over other options because traditional Medicare rarely requires prior authorizations. People choose traditional Medicare because they want to make their health care decisions with their doctor—not with a private company that’s out to make a profit.
“Simply put, the WISeR model—which again delays and denies necessary care to Medicare patients—it is reckless and irresponsible.
“I want my Republican colleagues to join us in voting to get rid of WISeR once and for all, because M. President, this should not be a partisan issue.
“We all have seniors in our states that deserve the highest level of care, without having to deal with red tape and delays. Thanks to Trump, AI is getting in between seniors and their health care: in Arizona, in New Jersey, in Ohio, in Oklahoma, in Texas, and my state of Washington.
“We have an opportunity to stop this harmful, experimental pilot program before more seniors are harmed. No senior in America should have to appeal their pain and suffering to a machine.
“To my colleagues, if it was your spouse or parent who needed care, who would you want to decide if they get their treatment? Their doctor or a for-profit algorithm? Would you want them to suffer in pain for weeks for care they are entitled to?
“I know what my answer is. Let’s maintain the promise of Medicare. Let’s pass this resolution.”
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