Trump Walked Out Rather Than Admit Spencer Pratt Lost.

Plus: the Iran ceasefire is back to live fire, and the slush fund I told you was dead turns out to be resting.

This is "What I'm Hearing" — a somewhat daily guide to the stories that matter, drawn from the best pro-democracy political writers working right now, with my analysis on top.

Iran Ceasefire Ends.

Two months after the ceasefire Trump took credit for brokering, the missiles are flying again.

This weekend, for the first time since the April truce, Iran fired 11 ballistic missiles at Israel, calling it a “warning” and saying the ceasefire had been “conditional on a cease-fire on all fronts.” Per Aaron Parnas, Trump’s first move was to call Netanyahu and, according to Axios, “tell him not to strike back.” Netanyahu struck back anyway. Israel hit Iranian missile-launch sites overnight, the Houthis fired on Israel, and Saudi Arabia sounded air-raid sirens near a base housing U.S. troops.

By Monday, Trump was reduced to posting “Israel and Iran must immediately stop ‘shooting’” on Truth Social. Asked about being ignored, he told reporters: “He won’t have any choice. I call the shots. I call all the shots. He doesn’t call the shots.” People don’t usually say that when it’s true. A White House official told MS NOW the renewed fighting “exposed a fundamental miscalculation,” and that Trump “underestimated the willingness of Iran to restart the conflict.”

This is the same war four House Republicans broke ranks last week to constrain, passing a measure that would force Trump to halt action against Iran or come to Congress for authorization. Robert Hubbell argues Trump, Pete Hegseth, and JD Vance have spent the conflict burning America’s credibility with allies who no longer trust U.S. leadership to be coherent.

This weekend exposed just how little control Trump has over the war he started; meanwhile, gas prices continue to rise as the Strait of Hormuz continues to be controlled by Iran.

Read more: Robert Hubbell, The Parnas Perspective, Semafor.

Last Week I Told You the Slush Fund Was Dead. I Was Wrong.

It isn’t dead. And how it isn’t dead is worth your time, because it’s a lesson in how this administration manages bad news.

Here’s what I got right. Under pressure from about half the Republican conference, who refused to pass the spending bill while the fund was attached, Acting AG Todd Blanche told a House subcommittee, “We are not moving forward with the fund. Period.” Politico ran the headline “Anti-Weaponization Fund is dead.” The Washington Post called it “abandoned.” None of that was entirely accurate.

Judd Legum makes the case that the press got played, and I think he’s right. Trump just nominated Blanche to be the permanent Attorney General, and can replace him at will. A man Trump controls saying he won’t pursue something “for now” isn’t a binding decision. And killing the fund did nothing to the part of the deal that always mattered most: the IRS provisions shielding Trump’s family businesses from audits are still fully in place. Legum notes Trump’s contested $72.9 million refund from 2010, which could have exposed him to a tax bill north of $100 million, is still protected.

Robert Hubbell puts the politics plainly: “every congressional Republican now owns the thug fund.” A Democratic amendment to block it got three Republican votes — Susan Collins, Dan Sullivan, and John Husted — and failed. Everyone else voted to protect $1.776 billion built in part to pay January 6 rioters, at least 97 of whom have already been arrested or charged with new crimes since Trump pardoned them.

So here is where we are. Trump and his family remain immune from future IRS audits, and although they aren’t currently pursuing the Thug Fund, nothing prevents them from activating it later.

Read more: Popular Information, Robert Hubbell, The Bulwark.

Trump Denies Another Election.

On Sunday, the President of the United States walked off a television set because a reality-TV star is losing a mayoral primary in Los Angeles.

NBC’s Kristen Welker taped a Meet the Press interview with Trump in Wisconsin. They covered Iran, gas prices, and farmers. Then they got to California, where ballots from Tuesday’s primary were still being counted. In the LA mayor’s race, Republican Spencer Pratt led on election night by about 40,000 votes. As the mail ballots came in, his lead shrank and then disappeared. By Sunday, Democratic City Councilmember Nithya Raman had passed him for the second runoff spot behind Mayor Karen Bass. Trump’s response: “The election was rigged. It was a dirty election and it’s happening again right now in California.” Welker asked for evidence. He said, “All I have to do is look.” She explained that California just counts slowly. He said, “I’ve had enough, thank you darling,” and walked out. By Monday morning, he was on Truth Social: “No way this could have happened. Rigged Election!”

You’re going to hear this claim from people in your life, so here’s how to take it apart.

Start with the logic. If California Democrats were rigging elections, this is the dumbest possible way to do it. In the governor’s race, Republican Steve Hilton came in second and led for much of the count — and the runoff isn’t even Democrat-versus-Democrat. In LA, the supposed riggers let Spencer Pratt jump out to a 40,000-vote lead on election night, then slowly clawed it back over days in a way that looks the most suspicious. If you were actually fixing the result, you’d never let the Republican lead in the first place. You’d have Raman and Bass on top election night and never give Pratt the illusion of a chance.

Then ask who’s supposedly doing it. The head of the LA Democratic Party, in effect, is Mayor Karen Bass — and Bass is the one hurt by this outcome. She would have crushed Spencer Pratt, a celebrity with no real base, in a landslide. Nithya Raman, a fellow Democrat with an actual constituency, is a far tougher opponent. If Bass had the power to rig the runoff, she’d rig it to face Pratt, not Raman. The result Trump is calling fraudulent is the one that makes life harder for the most powerful Democrat in the city.

Most important: nothing unusual happened here. This is how California counts votes, and it always has. The state sends every registered voter a mail ballot — 81% of California’s vote was cast by mail in 2024, the highest rate in the country — and every one of those ballots has to be verified by hand: signatures checked, duplicates ruled out, late-arriving ballots counted as long as they’re postmarked by Election Day. State law gives counties up to 30 days. It’s slow by design. And because Democrats vote by mail more than Republicans, the count drifts Democratic as it goes. California’s own Secretary of State called the delay “normal” on election night. Paul Mitchell, the California elections-data expert, has been warning for years that this exact scenario — a candidate ahead on election night who loses as the mail ballots are counted — is the one that breeds bogus fraud claims. He predicted it. So did everyone who knows how California votes. There is nothing abnormal here and no evidence of anything abnormal. There’s just a slow count producing a result Trump doesn’t like.

It’s a frustrating system, and California should speed it up, precisely because the delay hands bad actors the appearance of impropriety. But slow is not rigged. Brian Beutler argues the worst thing Democrats can do is what they did in 2020 and 2024 — roll their eyes and wait for the lie to collapse on its own. It doesn’t. Trump is rehearsing in a city election the same claim he’ll make about the midterms in November: that any count a Republican loses is fraud. The answer is to say plainly why that’s false every time, before it hardens.

Read more: Off Message (Beutler), Zeteo, Time, Letters from an American.

That's your Monday. The Iran ceasefire is over. The Slush Fund isn’t dead. And the President walked off a TV set rather than admit Spencer Pratt lost an election.