Welcome to Stack the Week for Monday July 27th. Thank you to our paying subscribers and our Apple podcast reviewers. Food for the larder and the soul. This is also a podcast, so you can listen to it while you read along or while you slowly tap your summer bag of wine. Let’s start. 1. IRAN The United States paused strikes on Iran for a second night while Iran refrained from retaliation. Last week we kept count of the nights in a row that bombing was continuing. This week starts by keeping track of the nights there was no bombing. We’ll see what happens to the underlying tension that broke the ceasefire apart in the first place: Iran says it has the right to manage Hormuz; the United States treats the waterway as an international passage. What struck me over the weekend was reporting from the New York Times, matched today by the Wall Street Journal, that a shortage of Patriot interceptors constrained the president’s options. That was a principal reason his military advisers opposed a larger strike. The Times reported that Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine told Trump in a closed-door meeting that a bigger strike remained technically doable but would dangerously deplete the Patriot interceptor stocks CENTCOM needs to protect troops in Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE. We’ve been saying for weeks that missile depletion is a problem. Here we see what that problem looks like in practice. “If we need to negotiate with bombs, we’ll negotiate with bombs, and we’re very good at it,” said the Secretary of Defense. That line didn’t age well. The United States had not run out of targets or offensive weapons. It was running short of the defensive margin required to protect American troops from the retaliation that further bombing might produce. Another connected thought: when the war started, Secretary of State Rubio originally justified U.S. involvement in the war as an “anticipatory” strategy. He argued that the U.S. knew Israel was planning to strike Iran and that Iran would inevitably retaliate against American forces. Therefore, he claimed, joining the fight preemptively was the only way to “get ahead” of that retaliation and avoid higher casualties. In short, the administration framed its intervention as evidence of superior foresight. However, if the administration were truly capable of “anticipatory thinking,” they would have planned for the logistical realities of the conflict. Instead, we are seeing the opposite: a shortage of Patriot interceptors has limited military options. This depleted stockpile is only the latest evidence that the administration failed to anticipate the long-term consequences of their actions, undermining their claim of strategic competence. 2. 67 Boat Strikes, 221 Dead—and No Drop in Cocaine CNN and The Washington Post published separate investigations Monday reporting that Operation Southern Spear has carried out 67 lethal strikes against vessels the administration says were involved in drug trafficking, killing 221 people. Were those attacks effective? The investigations report that internal Pentagon and DEA assessments found no measurable reduction in the cocaine supply reaching the United States. President Donald Trump has claimed the operation virtually ended maritime drug trafficking. This is not so. The government’s own analysts reached the opposite conclusion. We still don’t know what evidence identified the people killed as lawful military targets. Now another question: What public purpose is served if the supply remains undiminished? The failure to reduce the cocaine supply does not itself establish that every strike was unlawful. It does, however, gravely undercut the administration’s stated justification for the operation. If the strikes merely push traffickers onto different routes, the United States assumes the costs of a lethal campaign without achieving its stated objective. In that sense, this operation feels like the Iran War. Many things are blowing up. People are dying. The goal is not achieved. 3. Wildfires Drive Mass Evacuations in France and Spain Thousands of firefighters, military personnel, volunteers, and European partners were battling major fires Monday across southwestern France and central and eastern Spain. Reuters reported about 220,000 evacuees in France and 100,000 displaced in Spain. The Bordeaux fire was approximately 104,000 acres–more than four times the acreage burned by the 2025 Palisades Fire in Los Angeles– and the Spanish fires at about 190,000 acres. The immediate danger was to the pine forests, neighborhoods, campgrounds, tourist properties, airport hotels, and other development between Bordeaux and the Atlantic coast. Flames were advancing toward the outskirts of Bordeaux, at the center of one of the world’s best-known wine regions. Smoke was visible and could be smelled in Bordeaux; emergency phone alerts ordered residents to leave; traffic was diverted from roads leading toward Atlantic beaches; campgrounds were evacuated; and authorities cleared the hotel district around Bordeaux Airport. 4. Haitians Face Roundups as TPS Ends More than 300,000 Haitians are losing permission to live and work in the United States as ICE prepares targeted arrests and rapid deportations to their come county. A country where armed gangs control large areas. The State Department tells Americans not to travel there. Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, has allowed Haitians already in the United States to work legally and avoid deportation because conditions in Haiti are extraordinarily dangerous. A Supreme Court decision allowed the Trump administration to end that protection. The administration can start moving on deportations as of Monday. The deadline changes legal status instantly, but life does not change that neatly. A nurse may lose work authorization while patients still need care. Parents may have U.S.-citizen children who cannot safely follow them. CBS News reported that internal ICE plans include operations in communities such as Springfield, Ohio. Officers would locate, arrest, detain, and place newly deportable Haitians on accelerated removal flights. TPS is not citizenship or a green card. Congress created it as an emergency shelter for people who are already here when war, disaster, or institutional collapse makes return unsafe. Haiti received the designation after the 2010 earthquake, and it continued as the country endured political assassination, hunger, displacement, and gang rule. Sixteen years is “temporary” in the statute, but it is also enough time to build a career, raise children, buy a home, and become essential to an employer. Springfield was singled out because thousands of Haitians settled there under TPS and other lawful programs, filling jobs in manufacturing, health care, and other local industries. After Trump and Vance amplified the false claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were eating residents’ pets, Vance defended the tactic by telling CNN, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” He subsequently said that by “creating a story” he meant creating media attention—not admitting that he had fabricated the underlying allegation. But to be clear. Then Senator Vance knew that the story was fabricated. Springfield’s city manager reportedly told Vance’s staff on September 9 that the pet-eating allegations lacked evidence, before Vance continued amplifying them. The administration argues that a temporary program cannot become permanent through repeated extensions; affected families and advocates answer that ending the legal designation does not make Haiti safe. 5. Changing Casualty Ledger This story was reported by CNN: The authoritative Pentagon system for counting casualties was revised over the weekend. The reported total casualties for the Iran war increased by more than 140 wounded personnel. Four soldiers killed during renewed fighting, after disappearing from the Iran-war category, reappeared under a new category labeled “Overseas Operations.” That category also listed 207 wounded, but the Pentagon did not explain whether those 207 were entirely new cases, partly reclassified cases, or already included in the increase of more than 140. The Pentagon’s current overall figures show 18 service members killed and 624 wounded since the war began. Casualty accounting can sound bureaucratic. Ghoulish. But every row represents a person and a family who have sacrificed for their country. It also tells the country not directly experiencing that sacrifice what a war is costing. Some database corrections are ordinary. Reports arrive late, injuries are reclassified, and clerical systems fail. What makes this episode serious is the combination of large revisions, disappearing deaths, a newly created category, all of it encompassed by an administration that has committed itself to limited public explanation during an active war. 6. Two Wars Collide This story was reported by the Associated Press. A Russian ballistic missile strike near Kyiv killed at least 10 people and wounded nearly 100. In a separate development with potentially broader consequences, Ukraine struck an Iranian vessel that it said was connected to military cargo and Iranian support for Russia in Ukraine. In case you missed that while you were re-tiling your bathtub. The Ukrainians attacked the Iranians. On Monday, Zelenskyy visited Britain’s new prime minister Andy Burnham as Britain offered additional electronic-warfare support, principally a drone-jamming system. The immediate question is whether Iran treats the Caspian strike as an isolated loss or a reason to intervene more directly. You’d think they’d be busy enough. 7. Senate Issues A man dining at a vegan restaurant who berates the waiter for not quickly producing a porterhouse steak will not be the hero of a Chri
