Independent News Drop

KELI From Inkwell, this is the Independent News Drop. It's Friday, August 7. I'm Keli, with Hast.

KELI We're going to start in the Middle East, because three stories today connect directly and they need to be read together. First, the headline fact: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Erdogan, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif signed a trilateral defence agreement in Mecca. It is being called the Mecca defence pact.

HAST The structural thing to understand about that pact is what it is not. It is not a break from the United States. Analysts are describing it as supplementary, not a replacement. Regional partners want optionality. They want security architecture that does not depend entirely on Washington. But they are not discarding the US relationship. That framing matters, because a lot of coverage will reach for the dramatic version.

KELI Which connects directly to the second story. CNN is reporting, and Mediaite has picked this up, that General Dan Caine, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been privately telling Trump and senior administration officials that the US needs an exit from its war on Iran. The war began in February with joint US-Israel airstrikes. It is now six months in. Trump at one point called it a little excursion. Iran has since restricted transit through the Strait of Hormuz.

HAST What CNN's sources said, verbatim, is: Caine is looking for an off ramp. The reported reasoning from Caine is that US airstrikes alone are not on a path to achieving stated objectives. That is a significant thing for a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to be saying inside an administration. It is also the context in which you read the Mecca pact. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan are not building alternative security architecture in a vacuum. They are building it while the US is six months into a conflict with no clear exit, and while the Strait of Hormuz is restricted.

KELI The Senate also moved today on a related pressure point. The US Senate passed a sweeping sanctions bill targeting Russian energy. The legislation includes a 100 percent tariff on importers of Russian oil and gas. This is the Ukraine war track, separate from Iran, but it is worth noting that both are live simultaneously.

HAST The structural note there is bandwidth and leverage. The US is managing active military engagement with Iran, a Hormuz restriction affecting global shipping, a new multilateral defence pact among three significant regional powers, and now a Senate-passed sanctions package against Russia. How those interact in terms of oil markets and diplomatic capacity is not a small question, and most individual stories on any one of those won't tell you that.

KELI Staying on elections now, because there is a domestic political story today that is concrete and documented. Wesley Bell has defeated Cori Bush again in Missouri's Democratic primary. This is a rematch. Bell is the moderate Democrat. Bush was the incumbent, and an outspoken critic of Israel's conduct in Gaza.

HAST The Intercept's framing, which is where this story is coming from, emphasizes AIPAC's financial involvement on Bell's behalf. That is on the record and documented. The structural point that often gets soft-pedaled elsewhere is this: this is now two consecutive cycles in which a member of Congress who took a public position critical of Israel has been defeated with significant outside money from pro-Israel political groups. Whether you think that is appropriate political participation or something else, the pattern is a fact.

KELI From Missouri to Bogotá. Colombia has a new president. Abelardo De La Espriella was sworn in today, replacing leftist Gustavo Petro. De La Espriella is a right-wing politician who won June's runoff narrowly. He has vowed to, in his words, crush narco-terrorism and crack down on armed groups.

HAST Al Jazeera is framing this as part of a continuing rightward shift in Latin American politics, and that framing is accurate as a description of a trend. The specific note here is that De La Espriella's victory was narrow, and Colombia's armed group situation is not something that changes with a political term. Petro was also unable to achieve the negotiated peace he campaigned on. So the vow to crush narco-terrorism is a real commitment, but it arrives with a complicated inheritance.

KELI One more. The United Nations is warning that Sudan's war now threatens what it is calling an entire generation's future. Over eight million children are out of school. Nearly three-quarters of Sudan's schools have been affected by the conflict.

HAST There is no segue that earns the turn from Colombia's inauguration into this, so we are not going to pretend there is. This is simply what is also happening. Sudan's war has been ongoing, and the UN's language here, an entire generation, is not rhetorical. It is a description of a cohort of children for whom the years of foundational education are passing while the conflict continues. That tends not to surface unless an institution releases a number large enough to get picked up.

KELI And briefly, a domestic legal item. A federal judge has denied a temporary hold on Ten Commandments posters in Texas public school classrooms. The case was brought by Houston-area mothers who tried to use Texas state law, rather than federal First Amendment arguments, as the basis. An injunction hearing is scheduled for August 17.

HAST The legal strategy there is worth watching. Using state law rather than the First Amendment is an attempt to find a different route given the current federal judiciary's posture on Establishment Clause cases. The August 17 hearing will be the next moment to watch.

KELI Before we close, a word from Inkwell. Gil's Intelligent Version has a new companion piece on how the Latter-day Saints read the Trinity — three distinct beings, one in purpose, rather than three persons of one substance.

HAST It's an evenhanded look at the same question, decided the other way. At inkwell dot wiki, slash godhead.

KELI That is the drop for Friday, August 7. I'm Keli.

HAST And I'm Hast. We'll be back Monday.