The Daily Brief
Today
Good morning. Internal emails reveal ICE collaborated with the Iranian regime to stage deportation flights while Trump prepared for war; agents handed over specific nationals at Tehran's request and accidentally deported the wrong person to Iran. The same agency detained a San Diego Padres coach in El Paso, illustrating how the deportation machine grinds up workers at home while coordinating with authoritarian regimes abroad.
[Israel's financial strangulation of the West Bank has intensified across every sector, pushing the Palestinian Authority toward insolvency](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/world/middleeast/west-bank-economy.html). In Moscow, the Kremlin fired its top economist for warning that Russia cannot win a war of attrition against Ukraine.
Trump threatened to bomb Oman as Iran and Oman near a shipping arrangement in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump and Vance offered differing justifications for the war on Iran while sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln endure a ninth month at sea, past 250 consecutive days. Kushner confirmed the strategy: economic pressure on Tehran.
Florida's primaries confirm the Democratic Party's rightward march: politics that won in New York, Minnesota, and Michigan "won't cut it in red Florida." Democrats may nominate a former Republican while a socialist challenges an incumbent; the GOP's 19th District field includes carpetbaggers and two Trump-pardoned candidates. Florida prepares its 13th execution this year — the nation's busiest death chamber.