Friday morning, Israel began coordinated strikes against Iran’s nuclear program and retaliatory capabilities. As events unfold, AEI’s Critical Threats Project is documenting the scope, effectiveness, and likely consequences of Israel’s actions, along with Iran’s responses, with open-source intelligence analysis.

Despite this growing conflict in the Middle East and ongoing threats in Europe and Asia, the administration is failing to properly invest in the US military. Elaine McCusker and John G. Ferrari analyze the significant inadequacies of the Office of Management and Budget’s detailed defense budget numbers, which fail to even match the Biden administration’s projected 2026 proposal.

While the White House is underfunding defense, it is continuing to promote its “Big Beautiful Bill,” which the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates will add more than $5 trillion to the debt over the next decade. Senior Fellow Matt Weidinger explains how both parties have come to embrace budgetary gimmicks and fiscal irresponsibility.

Protests in Los Angeles and the administration’s aggressive response to them have focused attention on President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement. In a new conversation, Ross Douthat and Matt Continetti discuss how immigration became such a politically explosive issue and assess the potential fallout of Trump’s actions.

On immigration and other issues, the administration’s executive actions have often been stymied by district courts issuing universal injunctions, which forbid enforcement not just on parties to the case but across the entire country. In new testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, constitutional law professor J. Joel Alicea highlights the lack of any statutory or constitutional basis for this practice.