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Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, a politics newsletter that was all set to postpone our annual yachting trip in the Strait of Hormuz until the defense secretary said we “don’t need to worry about it.” What a relief!

The main story of the week continues to be the war in Iran, which continues proceeding at a pace that is difficult to know toward a goal that is challenging to understand. Back in Congress, the Senate is still trying to figure out how to deal with Trump’s demands that it pass the SAVE Act in the face of math that does not allow them to fulfill this goal—and now the future of the Texas Senate race is caught up in it. Plus, Dems are in a dispute about the big housing bill moving through Congress.

Let’s begin with the new ayatollah, who does appear to have quite a few similarities to the last ayatollah.

Not seeming particularly surrender-y at the moment.

As the Iran war carried on into another week, we heard—well, read—the first words from the supreme leader of Iran, Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the slain Ali Khamenei. This is a guy who was badly injured and is, according to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, “wounded and likely disfigured.” (Hegseth also called him the “so-called not-so-supreme leader,” a devastating burn.) The new Ayatollah Khamenei’s father, wife, and son are all dead, and maybe his mother too. No one’s quite sure. All of which is to say: This isn’t a Venezuela situation, in which the new head of the regime shows more of a willingness to play along with the U.S. Khamenei seems pissed off, and not really in dealmaking mood. He called for “revenge” and for “opening other fronts in areas where the enemy has little experience and would be highly vulnerable.” Most importantly, he said the “lever of closing the Strait of Hormuz must continue to be used.”

Khamenei is betting on the iron law of TACO. Soaring oil prices are not something that Trump has too long of an appetite for, which is why you’ve seen his administration trying to jawbone them down to buy a little more time. Congressional Republicans up for election this year are going to have panic attacks if gas prices climb much higher, and there was a noticeable uptick in Republican angst this week about the need to wrap things up. Americans are dying. The war is expensive, and depleting munitions stocks. Will Trump declare victory and try to end things in another week (if he even can), and the Surge can wash its hands of these downer opening entries? Trump, on Friday, said that he will end the war “when I feel it. When I feel it in my bones.” So maybe with another 20, 30 cents per gallon.

You’re scaring the children.

The story of how the Iran war came to be over the past few months is essentially the story of South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. On his own volition, he flew around the Middle East—to Israel, to the Gulf States—during congressional recesses to speak with foreign intelligence officials, give Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tips on how to persuade Trump to attack, and to backchannel with the Saudi crown prince. When he wasn’t in the Middle East, he was typically at Mar-a-Lago or Trump’s golf clubs, or on Air Force One, sucking up to Trump. His campaign to sell the president has been bombastic and loud, pure hustle. It has been successful.

With his confidence, though, we have to wonder how long he can continue flying this close to the sun. He’s been spending roughly 27 hours a day on Fox News and seems to think—maybe he’s right!—that he’s directing U.S. foreign policy. He’s been pressuring Gulf States to get more directly involved in the war, and said of Saudi Arabia that he was willing to do a mutual defense agreement with them under which “we would go to war for you” if “you’re attacked by Iran.” Discussing Iran’s regime, he talks about how “we’re going to blow the hell out of these people.” He’s urging the president to go after Lebanon next while already drawing up plans for Cuba after that. He has threatened Spain. Sen. Graham should enjoy his influence while he has it. Should all of this intervention turn into a fiasco, Trump has a very obvious candidate to throw under the bus.

When’s this endorsement coming?

In last week’s edition, we wrote about how all signs were pointing toward Trump endorsing incumbent Texas Sen. John Cornyn against MAGA Attorney General Ken Paxton in the state’s Senate GOP primary runoff. Trump had said that his endorsement would come soon, and demanded that the unendorsed candidate leave the race. All that seemed under negotiation were the terms of Paxton’s departure. A week later, though, that endorsement still hasn’t happened. Meanwhile, Trump is holding the endorsement as leverage over the Senate Republican leader, John Thune, as he tries to pressure Thune into finding some way to pass the SAVE Act, the GOP’s voter ID and voter verification bill. (More on that shortly.)

Trump may also just enjoy watching Cornyn dance. Cornyn is someone often described as an “institutionalist,” meaning someone who seeks to preserve Senate traditions rather than burn them down for short-term gain. On the other hand, Cornyn could really, really use a little short-term gain right now to get through this annoying primary. So this week, he wrote an op-ed explaining that he’s changed his mind after many years and that the Senate filibuster should be abolished in order to pass the SAVE Act—coincidentally, the precise thing President Trump wants the Senate to do at this moment. “Hopefully the president likes what he sees,” Cornyn told reporters, “but this has really been sort of an evolution in my own thinking.” What an independent thinker! Will this “evolution” be enough? Trump might need to see Cornyn eat one more slice of humble pie before he finally feels comfortable … going for the final humiliation of endorsing Paxton.

Time to put the SAVE Act to a glorious rest.

Trump really leaned into the SAVE Act this week. He declared that he wouldn’t sign any other legislation until it reached his desk. He’s also demanding that it be expanded into something resembling a multisubject partisan wish list, rather than an elections bill mandating national voter ID and proof of citizenship to register to vote. He wants the package to ban most mail-in ballots, gender transition surgeries for minors, and trans women participating in women’s sports. And as for Thune’s firm statements that the votes aren’t there to pass, well, any of this? “Well, he’s got to be a leader,” Trump said Wednesday.

Thune’s strength, and the reason he’s the GOP leader, is his patience amid a jet stream of bullshit. But he’s about done with Elon Musk and other people who don’t know what they’re talking about pushing him on this. He’s explained for weeks that movies aren’t real life, waiting out a Democratic “talking filibuster” isn’t a real thing, and there aren’t nearly 50 Republican senators willing to tie up the Senate floor for months without an assured outcome. The best he can offer, at this point, is a show. The plan for next week is to debate the bill, perhaps at length and through some nights, vote on some amendments, and force Democrats to hold the floor. After a few days or a week of this performance, the Senate will move to end debate and Democrats will successfully filibuster it. Thune hopes this will be enough to get everyone on his side, including the president, to calm down and move on. Good luck!

Intra-Dem wonky housing policy dispute DRAMA.

Let’s take a rare break to talk about legislation that the Senate can pass. On Thursday, the chamber passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a bipartisan joint led by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott that includes dozens of provisions to increase housing supply and update outdated federal housing regulations. The vote was 89–10. So that’s nice. But one provision in the legislation kicked up a total firestorm, particularly among Democrats. The bill seeks to ban large institutional investors, including but not limited to private equity firms, from buying up single-family homes. This is significantly overrated as a factor in the housing shortage, but it polls well, so both Democrats and the White House want it. At issue is how far the provision goes. While it provides an exemption for large “build-to-rent” developers, it requires those developers to then sell those homes they build to individual buyers within 7 years. That makes “build-to-rent” development a bad investment, which means it won’t happen, which means fewer homes will be built, which is at cross-purposes with the point of the bill.

No one likes to be the politician who risks being targeted as on the side of the corporations, which is why dicey language like this has made its way into Senate-passed legislation. But Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, the only Democrat to vote against the bill, spoke animatedly against the provision on the floor this week, describing the language as so bad that he assumed it was a “drafting error.” Warren—a member of Senate Democratic leadership alongside Schatz—said there was no such drafting error, and insinuated that Schatz was on the side of the corporations. “There are some folks in private equity who don’t like that,” Warren told HuffPost, “but it’s a very deliberate choice that is supported on a bipartisan basis.” As for the bill’s future, the House—which had passed its own housing bill earlier this year—doesn’t feel inclined to pass the Senate’s product as-is. So expect to hear more about this dispute over the coming weeks.

Now who came up with the idea of “mass deportations” in the first place? 

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Republicans held a retreat at Trump’s Doral resort in Florida earlier this week to figure out their policy agenda for the rest of the year and sharpen their message ahead of the midterm elections. In one session, White House deputy chief of staff James Blair, according to Axios, “urged House Republicans on Tuesday to stop emphasizing ‘mass deportations’ and instead focus their messaging on removing violent criminals.” Politico’s description, meanwhile, was that Blair “encouraged members to curb their hard-line rhetoric about indiscriminate deportations, indicating it could cost them key voting blocs.”

This confused us. Shouldn’t it be House Republicans telling the White House this, and not vice versa? “Mass Deportations” is a creation of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, and the defining policy goal of Stephen Miller, the most powerful Trump policy aide. We were in the dang Republican National Convention hall when all those delegates lifted their “MASS DEPORTATION NOW!” signs that the Trump campaign had printed and distributed to them. House Republicans who are worried about losing their seats don’t need to be told to soften their message away from “MASS DEPORTATION.” It was never their slogan to begin with.

Don’t say he’s a cruel boss. He buys his Cabinet ill-fitting shoes!

We have not been giving the big guy his own entries recently, since he’s the subtext of all of them. But we’ll make an exception for the shoe story, a genuine delight in an otherwise gloomy news world. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Trump is so smitten with his Florsheim dress shoes that he shod his whole Cabinet in the same footwear. The president guesses shoe sizes during meetings, has pairs ordered to the White House, and then gifts them with little notes. “All the boys have them,” one female White House aide told the Journal, while another joked that “it’s hysterical because everybody’s afraid not to wear them.” If blisters are the cost of doing business, so be it. There may be a chasm separating Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s heels from the rears of his dress shoes, but guess what? The boss is letting him topple Latin American regimes left and right. If you don’t have Trump Blisters, you’re probably not accomplishing much.

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