Current Affairs Of Pakistan & World: ‘We’re not finished at all’

‘We’re not finished at all’

Jul 21, 2026

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THE CATCH-UP

President Donald Trump meets with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in the Oval Office at the White House, Tuesday, July 21, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

President Donald Trump meets with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in the Oval Office at the White House on Tuesday. | AP / Mark Schiefelbein

The Houthis, an Iranian proxy in Yemen, are threatening to expand the war in Iran into a broader regional conflict. At least three American service members were killed in the last week in Jordan and Iraq. And the Pentagon is running out of cash.

But President Donald Trump is charging full speed ahead.

Trump is being increasingly squeezed by a costly and unpopular war he once said would last for “four or five weeks,” which is still escalating in its 144th day. But as White House allies and GOP lawmakers fret that the extended conflict could cost the party the midterms, the president reiterated today, “We’re not finished at all.”

“If we left tomorrow, … we had a big success,” Trump told reporters during an Oval Office meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun. “But we're not leaving tomorrow.” He brushed off concerns that Houthi rebels would block Saudi shipping in the Red Sea, which could further drive up global energy prices, saying simply that “if something like that happens, we take care of it.”

Trump has repeatedly said that the fast-approaching midterms do not factor into his calculus with the war, a refrain he repeated today when asked if Tehran was attempting to impact the elections by threatening the Strait of Hormuz. “Probably,” he replied — but added that “they won’t have any impact on me.”

He said be believed “people are very impressed,” then extolled his January operation in Venezuela to extract its leader, Nicolás Maduro. “We took over Venezuela. We now have a great relationship with Venezuela. We went to war with Venezuela, and the war ended in one day,” he said.

But Iran is not Venezuela. Nearly 100 U.S. troops have been injured in the past few weeks, the Pentagon announced yesterday, and at least three were killed this past week. The Pentagon yesterday identified two of those fallen soldiers as Pvt. Isabella Gonzales and First Lt. Tyler James Feehan, and today identified a third as Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton.

Trump today said he would “be going to Dover” Air Force Base and “paying our respects.” Press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed yesterday on X that he would be attending “the dignified transfer of our fallen heroes” today.

But that ceremony appears to have been postponed and does not appear on Trump’s public schedule today.

Good Tuesday afternoon. Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Drop me a line at isentner@politico.com.

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6 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

1. TOUGH SELL: Speaker Mike Johnson and OMB Director Russ Vought told House Republicans during a closed-door meeting this morning that they’d get a chance to pass a sweeping partisan policy bill after the midterms — their latest pitch to push forward a party-line reconciliation effort containing the Trump administration’s $95 billion supplemental funding request for the Iran war and farm aid, POLITICO’s Meredith Lee Hill and colleagues report. Final votes on that package are expected tomorrow, but Johnson is still leaning on a handful of GOP holdouts on different agenda items. More from Meredith and colleagues

2. CASH DASH: “MAGA Inc reaches $400M with no spending to boost candidates,” by POLITICO’s Alex Gangitano: “The MAGA Inc. super PAC added $18 million in cash on hand since the beginning of June, including with donations from NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and billionaires Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. That brings the total raised this year to nearly $100 million. … Funds aren’t going out to help candidates, though. MAGA Inc., spent on consulting fees, bank fees, credit card payments, an online fundraising platform and an event photographer, according to FEC filings posted Monday, which account for spending last month.”

3. RELEASE THE RECORDINGS: A federal appeals court late yesterday rejected former President Joe Biden’s push to block the release of audio recordings and transcripts of his interviews with a ghostwriter before his presidency — but suspended the decision until Aug. 3 to grant Biden more time to consider another appeal, AP’s Michael Kunzelman reports. “We conclude that any remaining incursion on personal privacy from disclosure of the now-redacted materials likely does not outweigh the public interest in disclosure,” the panel wrote in a 2-1 ruling. Judge Florence Pan, a Biden nominee, wrote in a dissenting opinion that the former president has shown a “substantial privacy interest” in keeping the recordings hidden.

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4. TRADE TALKS: The Trump administration and Mexico are beginning a third round of negotiations as the countries work to revise the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement — days after Trump slapped an additional 50 percent tariff on some Canadian goods, Reuters’ David Lawder reports. “The talks, which exclude Canada, are set to run for three days and are the first formal discussions on changes to the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement since the Trump administration declined to extend the six-year-old regional trade pact on July 1.”

5. EPSTEIN LATEST: Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) is pushing the DOJ to release all of its records related to Jeffrey Epstein’s contacts with foreign governments as the House Judiciary ranking member probes whether the late convicted sex offender had acted as an unregistered foreign agent, POLITICO’s Gregory Svirnovskiy reports. Raskin lacks subpoena power while his party is in the minority — but the move could drag Epstein back into the spotlight ahead of the midterms, and it serves as a potential preview of Democrats’ plans next year if they take back the House in the midterms.

6. AI WARS: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S. would begin investigating whether Chinese open source artificial intelligence models included American intellectual property, Bloomberg’s Daniel Flatley reports. “If we see, especially, that overseas models are stealing from our great companies, we have the ability to sanction them,” he said this morning on Fox Business.

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TALK OF THE TOWN

TRIBUTE FOR GRAHAM — Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda next Tuesday, about two weeks after his unexpected death, Senate Majority Leader John Thune announced today. His funeral — organized by his sister, Sen. Darline Graham, who replaced him in the Senate — will include an invite-only ceremony at the Washington National Cathedral attended by President Donald Trump. More from POLITICO’s Gregory Svirnovskiy

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE — At the repeat White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Friday, the White House Correspondents’ Association will honor Secret Service Police Officer Victor Gonzales and the staff of the Washington Hilton for their service during April’s dinner, which was cut short when a gunman opened fire in the hotel. Gonzales was at a security checkpoint when the gunman tried to burst through. “[H]e ran toward danger so that thousands of others could make it home safely,” outgoing WHCA President Weijia Jiang said in a statement. More from POLITICO’s Liset Cruz

Catch up on On the Road with Jonathan Martin

Season 2 is underway. Watch the premiere from North Dakota, where Jonathan Martin sits down with Doug Burgum, Kelly Armstrong and Kevin Cramer to talk Trump, Teddy Roosevelt, conservation politics and the future of the GOP.

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NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM — “House Democrats rebut GOP attacks on Smithsonian as museum leader faces hearing,” by WaPo’s Jonathan Edwards: “House Democrats issued a rebuttal to the White House’s attack on the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, arguing in a report that the Trump administration cherry-picked quotes, mangled basic facts and misstated who controls the institution — even as House Republicans escalate the fight by summoning the museum’s director to testify Tuesday.”

OUT AND ABOUT — The Planetary Society, Johns Hopkins University, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and SpaceNews hosted a Capitol Hill discussion and reception marking the 50th anniversary of Viking 1’s landing on Mars. Speakers included Reps. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) and Judy Chu (D-Calif.), Tom Young, Joel Levine, Dave Thompson, Lindsay Hays, Paul Wooster and former astronaut Tom Jones. Bobby Braun and Jim Bell moderated, and Casey Dreier emceed. SPOTTED: Rep. George Whitesides (D-Calif.), Matt Shindell, Jonathan Lunine, Mary Guenther, Marchel Holle, Ann Zulkosky, Ari Koeppel, Vicky Hamilton, Devin Bryant, Brandon Eden, Lance Bush, Allen Cutler, Mike Gruss and Jeff Foust.

TRANSITIONS — David Weinberg has joined Invariant to lead the congressional oversight and investigations practice. He is a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) alum. … Paul Lindsay will be SVP of public affairs at the American Petroleum Institute, as Rolf Hanson retires. Lindsay previously worked at Intuit and is a PhRMA alum. … Joe Buccino is now comms director for the House Republican Conference. He most recently worked at Spirit AeroSystems and is a Trump DOD alum.

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