Who Are Heroes?

Sometimes when I am going through a rough patch, I remember something my father said to me numerous times when I was a boy.

“I just want you to be happy.”

While that sounded simple enough at the time, even as a boy I knew that happiness wasn’t going to be all that easy to attain.

Now, as I look back over a complicated life filled with many ups and downs, I know my Dad was expressing a wish, not necessarily an expectation. And over the years, I came to see that the cost of one person’s joy could often be another person’s misery.

So even happiness can be complicated.

Another, perhaps more relevant memory from my youth is one of those teenaged conversations with three of my male cousins, where we compared notes on the following question:

“If you had to die, how would it be?” 

We discussed accidents, sickness, old age — all the reasons people around us had died, but if memory serves, the consensus was that we would prefer to die a hero in war.

Young men’s fantasy: To be a hero in war.

Old men’s actions: To send them into war.

It’s a story as old as time.

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The dramatic fall from power by Kristi Noem brings a small measure of justice to the brave people of Minneapolis who peacefully protested Noem’s ICE agents rounding up immigrants and the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

I will always honor the brave men and women in our armed forces for their sacrifices overseas, regardless of whether the cause is justified, but the people at home standing up to an autocrat also are real American heroes

HEADLINES:

• The End of Limits on a President’s Wars (New Yorker)

• Trump ousts Noem as frustrations build among White House officials, GOP lawmakers (CNN)

• House Turns Back Bid to Restrict Trump’s War Powers in Iran (NYT)

• The Real Reason Trump Went to War (Atlantic)

• Trump calls on Kurds to aid U.S. effort in Iran, offers support (WP)

• Chaos sown by Iran’s attacks across the Persian Gulf is key to its strategy (AP)

• The Coming Invasion of Iran (Atlantic)

• Iran war spreads as European nations drawn further in (CNN)

• War in Iran cuts world off from key energy source (WP)

• Israeli military tells hundreds of thousands to flee Beirut (Guardian)

• NATO is vigilant about events in the Middle East and the shooting-down of a missile ‌headed for Turkish airspace, but invoking Article Five is not on the table right now. (Reuters)

• Senate rejects war powers measure to withdraw forces from Iran (LAT)

• US holds talks with Iranian Kurdish militants over anti-regime operations (FT)

• Kurds backed by Mossad, CIA could lead next phase of war in Iran (Axios)

• US submarine torpedoes warship for first time since WWII (CNN)

• How a DHS shooting of a third U.S. citizen went unnoticed for months (WP)

• Judge Orders Government to Begin Refunding More Than $130 Billion in Tariffs (WSJ)

• James Talarico Says ‘New Politics Is Being Born’ After Texas Primary Win (NYT)

• Thousands of public comments slam Trump’s ballroom: ‘I did not vote for this’ (WP)

• High-throughput phenomics of global ant biodiversity (Nature)

• India’s economy is not as big as economists thought (Economist)

• The Internet’s Most-Read Tech Publications Have Lost 58% of Their Google Traffic Since 2024 (Nieman)

• Trump Announces A.I. Industry Pledge to Pay for Power (NYT)

• DOJ Fails To Redact Thousands Of Secret Epstein Family Recipes (Onion)