Lots to discuss today, but one big headline before we do: We’ve got a DHS deal. The partial government shutdown looks likely to end after House GOP leadership suddenly agreed yesterday to accept the Senate’s proposal to fund everything in DHS except ICE and the Border Patrol—itself a package Senate Democrats had suggested long before Senate Republicans finally agreed to it last week. More on this below. Happy Thursday.

Oh, the War? Don’t Worry. It’s Over. Almost.

by William Kristol

What was the point of Donald Trump’s sad and lackluster speech to the nation last night?

The main point—really, the only point—was that his Iran war is basically over. Of course it’s not quite over. But, he wants us all to understand, it’s going to be over soon. Very soon.

“We’re getting very close.”

“We are going to finish the job and we’re going to finish it very fast.”

“We are on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly.”

Why is Trump so very eager to have the American people understand that his war is so very much “nearing completion”? Because, as Nate Silver and Eli McKown-Dawson put it, in the last two weeks Trump’s “popularity has taken something of a nosedive.” So Trump wants out. Last night he promised us over and over again that we’ll be out soon.

Trump doesn’t want the American people to think too hard about the lack of justification for the war. He doesn’t want anyone to dwell on the fact that there was no imminent threat from Iran, or that Trump didn’t obtain authorization to go to war from Congress. He doesn’t want the American people to focus on what his administration’s conduct of the war has shown about its lack of character and competence. And he wants to divert attention as much as possible from the real-world consequences of his war for the American and global economy.

And by the way, what about all those U.S. troops steaming toward the region for possible ground operations—to take Kharg Island or reopen the Strait of Hormuz or seize the nuclear material? What about all those plans for putting “boots on the ground,” something that Trump boasted just a few days ago that he wasn’t afraid of?

Fuhgettaboutit. The prospect of the use of ground troops was never raised in last night’s update. The term “ground troops” was never uttered.

Trump did go out of his way, however, to tell us that this war was not going to last as long as World War I or World War II or Vietnam. So that’s something. And he told us that even though we’ve already “completely decimated Iran,” that we’ll be doing some more decimating on our way out the door. “We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages [sic], where they belong.”

So we won’t succeed in preventing the Iranian regime from closing international waters in the Strait of Hormuz, and we won’t be doing anything to help liberate the people of Iran from that oppressive regime. But we’re going to continue to rain down death and destruction on the nation of Iran.

Our founders hoped that the United States might herald a Novus Ordo Seclorum, a new order of the ages. In Trump’s America, we’ve given up on that promise. Instead we boast that we’re going to bomb people back to the “Stone Ages, where they belong.”

NASA vs. the Internet

by Andrew Egger

For the first time in more than half a century, we’re heading for the moon. Yesterday evening, the Artemis II mission laun