Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the ranking Democrat on the Intel committee, spoke to RCP's Phil Wegmann about what we know about Israel's attack last night on Iran, and Iran's possible retaliation, on Friday's edition of the RealClearPolitics podcast "Well, I guess we know two things," Himes said. "Number one, the initial Israeli strikes were superbly precise and accompanied by a massive failure of intelligence on the part of the Iranians." "Stunningly precise, difficult, probably years of planning." "Just now we’re starting to see the Iranian response," he said. "And then you’ll have the Israeli response to that....

Andrew Walworth, Tom Bevan, and Carl Cannon discuss the political blame game over anti-ICE protests and riots in Los Angeles. President Trump deployed the National Guard and hundreds of Marines to guard ICE detention centers as the LAPD tries to deal with significant looting. Meanwhile, Democratic Mayor Karen Bass entirely blames the administration's immigration enforcement for escalating the situation. "Once Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass say Trump did this to escalate the situation, that's why he did it, that sends a signal to demonstrators to escalate," Carl Cannon said....

Wednesday on the RCP Podcast, White House correspondent Phil Wegmann discussed his new piece on comments from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance at the "American Compass Institute" gala last night: "Vance and Rubio Toast the New Right" Can this new think tank turn MAGA into a coherent governing philosophy that lasts longer than Donald Trump? Will Vance or Rubio be the next leader of the movement? "The American Compass is sort of the intellectualized, populist version of MAGA, with a lot of the themes you'd hear at a Trump rally, but these are the policy wonks who have thought through all of these ideas," Wegmann explained. "They are rejecting an older Republican orthodoxy....

Wednesday on the RCP Podcast, Tom Bevan talks to Edward Yingling, co-founder of Princetonians for Free Speech, about an exclusive RCP article by recent Princeton graduate Danielle Shapiro outlining the university’s recent policies and reining in antisemitism on campus: "Princeton Fails To Enforce Its Rules on Free Speech, Antisemitism" "We're not at all happy about having to have this kind of conversation about Princeton. Princetonians for Free Speech was set up to support Princeton and free speech, but we have a problem," Yingling said. "The president of the university will not admit we have a problem and do things other universities are doing to solve them." "There was a terrible event in April, where the former prime minister of Israel, Naftali Bennett, was invited to speak by three Jewish groups and by the School of International and Public Policy," he explained. "Princeton did do something to protect him—but not enough....