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Trump’s Formula for Forever Wars

Spencer Ackerman on Sen. Lindsey Graham’s warmongering legacy and next U.S. forever war in Iran.

President Donald Trump blew up the temporary ceasefire after the U.S. launched a series of airstrikes against Iran over the weekend. The two nations have continued to exchange strikes throughout the week, with Iran targeting U.S. allies in the Middle East, as Congress debates further entangling the United States military with Israel — a proposal that would give Israel enormous leverage over U.S. defense policy.

“This is a formula for a forever war,” national security reporter Spencer Ackerman tells The Intercept Briefing. A major champion of such forever wars was Sen. Lindsey Graham, who passed away over the weekend. “Lindsey Graham never met a war he didn’t like, never met a war he didn’t want to send other people’s children to wage,” says Ackerman, who writes the Substack Forever Wars. “The white whale for Lindsey Graham and many others in the bridge between neoconservatism and MAGA was Iran — assaulting Iran not only at home, but rolling back its regional challenge to U.S. and Israeli power in the Middle East.”

“Whatever else MAGA says about wars,” says Ackerman, “what it wants is domination. It wants domination not only at home, but abroad. That’s where Graham recognized — that instead of being someone like John McCain, who sought to occasionally butt against, fight against Donald Trump — that Graham could help maneuver Trump into being a vehicle for their shared project. And he did that with really tremendous success.”

“It occasionally cost Graham dignity, but … he saw that as an easy trade-off if it meant maneuvering Trump into a kind of position that Graham, had he been president, had he been secretary of state, had he been secretary of defense, would’ve wanted to pursue.”

Politics reporter Akela Lacy also drops in to discuss how the turmoil at home and abroad is impacting the midterms. After Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner dropped out of the race, Lacy says, “Maine Democrats are in a situation where they’re all trying to become the nominee that the party picks to replace Platner on the ballot to go against Collins in November. Many of those candidates have now come out and called to abolish ICE outright after the shooting in Maine.”

For more, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter at The Intercept.

Jessica Washington: And I’m Jessica Washington, politics reporter at The Intercept. 

AL: Jessie, we were anticipating having a slow July, but the news has not slowed down. Trump reignited the U.S. war with Iran, resuming airstrikes on the country, and said we’re taking over the Strait of Hormuz. 

Meanwhile, Congress is trying to pass the National Defense Authorization Act after several weeks of gridlock, asking for a record $1.15 trillion in funding. On Tuesday, Senate Democrats blocked the bill in protest of the Iran war and over a provision that would more closely integrate the U.S. and Israeli military. On Wednesday, more than half of House Democrats voted to strip $3.3 billion in aid to Israel from the measure, though the effort failed in the broader House.

And within the last week, there have been four ICE-related deaths. Federal immigration agents shot and killed two fathers: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas and Johan Sebastián [Durán] Guerrero in Maine. That brings the total number of people fatally shot by immigration agents in Trump’s second term to 11. On Tuesday, a third man was struck by a truck fleeing agents in Florida. And a Venezuelan man died in custody in Georgia after being denied medicine, reported by our former colleague Jose Olivares at The Guardian. 

At least 52 people have died in ICE custody during Trump’s second term. It’s the highest level in a decade according to a new report from Physicians for Human Rights [and Human Rights Watch]. 

Jessie, this week you covered how lawmakers are responding, or not, to Trump’s deadly immigration agenda. What did you find out?

JW: When I was looking into it, I was wondering where is this momentum that we saw in January and February around immigration, around at least saying, ICE is wrong, the actions that ICE is taking are immoral, are against the code of our nation. Those were the kinds of things you were hearing in January and February.

That was in response, obviously, to the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota that elicited a huge response — not just from Congress, but also you saw a massive response in the streets, people coming out in droves to support their community to say this isn’t right, to say that you can’t just rob us of vital members of our community.

We’re really not seeing that same intensity either in policies that were put out, even policies that were going to go nowhere. Obviously, Democrats caved on DHS spending in April. We just really haven’t seen the same moment that we did in January and February. 

I had a long conversation with Congresswoman Delia Ramirez, who introduced the “Melt ICE” Act in January. That bill would end the Department of Homeland Security’s funding to detain and monitor immigrants. She’s characterized it as a first step, but really when she’s had conversations with her colleagues in the wake of these two really horrific shootings, she’s found that there just isn’t that same intensity, there isn’t that same momentum for action. 

There’s two things happening from her perspective, from what she told me. One of them is racism and the fact that the people who were killed most recently were not U.S. citizens. Alex Pretti and Renee Good were, and they were also white, and that obviously changes the tenor, at least for the media and the public.

Then there’s the fact that without the large national outpouring, without voters really pushing politicians, they aren’t motivated because their donor class is not motivated. They benefit from a broken immigration system where people are forced to take these low-wage jobs. So in an absence of kind of a massive public outcry of people pushing their politicians, you just aren’t going to see that action, and that’s really coming from my conversation with her.

But I think you can see that in the way that Democratic politicians have not risen in this moment — and I would argue they didn’t rise in January and February — but certainly we saw more energy.

The other big news of the week was as the world closely watched for updates on Sen. Mitch McConnell’s health, Sen. Lindsey Graham died from a heart condition. This of course happened in the backdrop of the looming midterms where Republicans currently hold a slim majority in the senate. 

Maine Sen. Susan Collins who is running in a chaotic Senate race, is facing protests for voting to give DHS $70 billion for immigration enforcement after ICE agents fatally shot Guerrero in Maine. Akela, there is so much to unpack here. Can you talk about the political implications unfolding here and what you’re watching for in the midterms? 

AL: This is really shaping what was already a tumultuous situation in the Maine Senate race, where obviously, Graham Platner dropped out last week over an allegation of rape. Now Maine Democrats are in a situation where they’re all trying to become the nominee that the party picks to replace Platner on the ballot to go against Collins in November.

Many of those candidates have now come out and called to abolish ICE outright after the shooting in Maine. That was something that Platner had campaigned on, obviously, prior to the shooting. Our colleague Noah Hurowitz is actually working on a story about this that you can read at The Intercept.

Would-Be Platner Replacements in Maine Rally Around “Abolish ICE” (or Something Close)

We see candidates adopting this sense of urgency around ICE that is shaping the campaigns of insurgent candidates and frustration among voters right now. Jessie, you’re talking about feeling like the momentum on the ground against ICE is not being matched in Congress, something that’s animating the midterms and emphasizing this sort of split-screen where people don’t feel like Democratic leadership or longtime incumbents are meeting the moment. We’re seeing that shape now not just this race in Maine, but we’ve seen that be a rallying call for many of the candidates who have won their races already this primary cycle.

One thing that I thought was interesting about how this is unfolding in Maine is that one of the candidates, Dr. Nirav Shah, who I spoke to actually before Platner dropped out of the race — he had stopped short of calling to abolish ICE outright. He said it can’t exist in its current form, whether we reform it or dismantle it or transfer its duties to another body, it has to go.

But earlier this week, he came out and said “Abolish ICE” outright, after the shooting. So we are seeing this have a real effect on how candidates are running their races. Even people who might have thought saying “Abolish ICE” a week ago — wasn’t the right strategy.

JW: That’s one thing in my conversation with Congresswoman Ramirez that came up, is that people are not feeling as if Congress is meeting this moment or meeting them where they’re at.

They’re saying, we’re in the streets. We’re risking our lives, our freedom, in some cases. Obviously, we’ve seen the prosecutions that came out of Prairieland, those protests. So people are saying, “We’re risking our lives, we’re risking our freedom, and you’re going to lunches and meetings on the Hill like everything is normal.”

I do think that’s going to be a motivating force in these midterms, and we’ll see if candidates meet that moment. Or if they end up on the side of most of Congress, which seems to be doing not much of anything on this really horrific issue.

AL: You mentioned that there’s been protests against Collins in Maine after the ICE shooting, pointing to the fact that she voted for ICE funding without any conditions. I’m interested to see if the most recent killings and deaths related to ICE have any effect on what appeared — even in the week where the last Platner scandal broke — she was still leading him in polling. I’m curious to........

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