Happy Wednesday! Smart Brevity™ count: 1,971 words … 7½ mins. Thanks to Noah Bressner for orchestrating. Edited by Bill Kole and Mickey Meece.

🏛️ Bulletin: At 3:54 a.m. ET, President Trump announced on Truth Social that he’s pausing the nomination of Jay Clayton to lead the intelligence community. Instead, he’ll keep Bill Pulte, a MAGA favorite, as acting head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) until Congress confirms Clayton’s successor as top federal prosecutor in Manhattan.

Steve Bannon, top MAGA podcaster, immediately texted me: “President Trump just pulled the pin on a hand grenade named Bill Pulte and rolled it into the Tent called the Deep State.”
Clayton was to have his confirmation hearing today. But Trump — posting from France, where he’s attending the G7 Summit — said he’s “cancelling” that. The Senate had been expected to move fast to confirm Clayton as a way to shorten Pulte’s time as acting head.

In what Trump called a “slight bit of intrigue,” he’s tying passage of his prized voter ID measure, the SAVE America Act, to this whole chain of events.

1 big thing: MAGA hawk mutiny

Photo illustration of Donald Trump, boxed in by two screens of red, white and green glitchy static on his left and right.
Photo illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios. Photo: Saul Loeb/Getty Images

President Trump’s Iran deal has opened an explosive second front in MAGA’s civil war, waged by hawkish allies who view U.S. concessions as an existential betrayal of Israel, Axios’ Zachary Basu writes.

Why it matters: Across two terms and 11 years in the political spotlight, no issue has divided Trump’s base more than the Iran war.

When U.S. strikes began, leading isolationists — from Tucker Carlson to Marjorie Taylor Greene — were excommunicated for suggesting Trump had abandoned “America First” principles on behalf of Israel.

Three months later, with an interim deal in hand and peace potentially on the horizon, the Republican hawks who cheered Trump into battle are now leading their own furious rebellion.

🖼️ The big picture: Pro-Israel conservatives are demanding to see the text of Trump’s memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Iran, frustrated as much by the deal’s secrecy as by its reported substance.

The White House has given conflicting signals on timing: Senior officials said the text would be released yesterday or today. Trump said it may come Friday, after a formal signing ceremony in Geneva.
Republican leadership in Congress remains in the dark — and frustrated by the lack of detail.
So is Israel, which hasn’t seen the official MOU despite being a party to the ceasefire.
Trump inflamed the backlash yesterday by praising Iran’s negotiators in a bilateral meeting with Qatar’s emir, a key mediator distrusted by many pro-Israel Republicans.

“We’re dealing with people that I think are very rational people,” Trump said, adding that Iranian officials were “nice to deal with,” “not radicalized” and “looking to help their country.”
For hawks who view Iran’s government as a terrorist regime incapable of reform, the president’s language deepened their fear that the deal rewards Tehran for surviving the war.

President Trump meets with UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan yesterday at the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, France. Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

🔎 Zoom in: The objections from Trump’s pro-Israel allies fall largely into three buckets.

Money: The MOU would allow Iran to immediately begin selling oil while opening the door to sanctions relief, frozen funds and a $300 billion reconstruction fund during the next phase of nuclear talks. U.S. officials stress that financial relief would be tied to compliance, but hawks are apoplectic at the mere prospect of money flowing to Tehran.

Leverage: Months of overwhelming military force crippled Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and conventional military defenses. By entering a 60-day negotiation window and lifting the naval blockade now, hawks argue Trump is trading away unprecedented leverage. Some even claim the regime was on the brink of collapse, though there’s little evidence of that.

Trust: Critics reject the premise that Iran can be coaxed into moderation — a concern echoed inside Trump’s own government. Axios reported that CIA Director John Ratcliffe warned Trump that U.S. intelligence has serious doubts about Tehran’s willingness to make the nuclear concessions required for a final deal.

Between the lines: Vice President Vance may be more vulnerable to the deal’s political fallout than Trump, who can always pitch himself as the president who took on Iran when no one else dared.

Vance, the likely 2028 heir to the MAGA throne and a longtime skeptic of foreign entanglements, helped negotiate the MOU and is expected to sign it Friday in Geneva.

Defending the deal on Megyn Kelly’s show yesterday, Vance dismissed hawk critics as wanting “an endless conflict” that goes on “until every Iranian is dead” — then urged MAGA skeptics to stay inside the coalition.

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